Warming temperatures can impact animals’ reproduction: Studies

New Delhi, Sept 5: Two studies have found that extreme temperatures can change how a species reproduces, with one reptilian species becoming more resilient to climate change, while the other displaying a ‘sex reversal’ with a biological male growing into a functional female.

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Findings highlight that temperature not only impacts climate, but can also change how life is propagated, having profound implications for an increasingly warmer future, researchers said.

The team, including researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, said that driven by human activity in the form of contamination and climate change, including greenhouse gas emissions and extreme temperatures, biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate.

However, how the changing environment directly affects reproduction and survival of species is not clearly known, they said.

One of the studies, published in PLOS Genetics, looked at the Guibe's ground gecko ~ a lizard species native to the warm ecosystems of Madagascar in Africa.