Activity restriction and the mechanistic basis for extinctions under climate warming

Abstract

Correlative analyses predict that anthropogenic climate warming will cause widespread extinction but the nature and generality of the underlying mechanisms is unclear. Warming-induced activity restriction has been proposed as a general explanatory mechanism for recent population extinctions in lizards, and has been used to forecast future extinction. Here, I test this hypothesis using globally applied biophysical calculations of the effects of warming and shade reduction on potential activity time and whole-life-cycle energy budgets. These 'thermodynamic niche' analyses show that activity restriction from climate warming is unlikely to provide a general explanation of recent extinctions, and..