DOI: 10.5061/dryad.rjdfn2zgn
title: Range restriction, climate variability, and human-related risks imperil lizards worldwide

description: Aims: Identifying major reasons for species imperilment is a necessary
 step for conservation, yet the degree to which we can generalize is hard
 for species-rich yet less-studied taxa, such as lizards. Here, we aim to
 bridge the gap by providing comprehensive analyses of the correlates and
 processes of species extinction and threats for global lizards. Location:
 Global Time period: Current Major taxa studied: Lizards Methods: We
 compiled a dataset comprising extinction risk status, six intrinsic
 traits, and seven extrinsic factors for 5256 lizard species. We carried
 out binomial distribution tests for 43 families and seven realms to check
 the non-randomness in species’ extinction risk and then employed
 phylogenetic linear regressions to identify the key factors that relate to
 the extinction proneness of lizards and species subgroups. Based on the
 IUCN threat assessment, we identified major threats for global lizards and
 for major families and regions. Results: We found strong evidence of
 taxonomic and geographical non-randomness in the extinction risk of
 lizards. Geographical range size, human footprint and density, insular
 endemism, temperature and precipitation seasonality, and body size were
 key predictors of extinction risk, and the first three factors were also
 important across families and realms. Moreover, newly described species
 were more likely to have a restricted range size and a higher extinction
 risk. Globally, the most detrimental threat was habitat destruction, while
 overexploitation, species invasion, and climate change varied widely in
 importance among species groups. Main conclusions: Overall, we highlight
 the detrimental influences of range restriction, climate variability, and
 anthropogenic threats to species persistence. We suggest that lizards are
 potentially at high risk of extinction due to widespread human disturbance
 and species with extinction-prone traits require conservation
 prioritization. Moreover, lizards of different families and regions
 require different management strategies because of variation in
 extinction-risk correlates and threats. --
description: The intrinsic predictors were collected from
 Meiri, 2018, Skeels et al. (2020), and Caetano et al. (2022). The
 extrinsic factors were calculated by mapping the environmental raters to
 the species distribution grids based on the shapefiles of the Global
 Assessment of Reptile Distributions (GARD; Roll & Meiri, 2022).
 1.       Meiri, S. (2018). Traits of lizards of the
 world: Variation around a successful evolutionary design. Global ecology
 and biogeography, 27, 1168–1172. 2.       Skeels, A., Esquerré, D., & Cardillo, M.
 (2020). Alternative pathways to diversity across ecologically distinct
 lizard radiations. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 29,
 454–469. 3.       Roll, U., & Meiri, S. (2022). Data from:
 GARD 1.7—updated global distributions for all terrestrial reptiles. Dryad
 Digital Repository. 4.       Caetano, G. H. D. O., Chapple,
 D. G., Grenyer, R., Raz, T., Rosenblatt, J., Tingley, R., ... &
 Roll, U. (2022). Automated assessment reveals that the extinction risk of
 reptiles is widely underestimated across space and phylogeny. PLoS
 Biology, 20, e3001544.
description: We
 used R and the packages listed below to carry out the analyses. The
 phylogenetic linear regression model was performed using the package
 phylolm (https://github.com/lamho86/phylolm). The model averaging analyses
 were performed by using the package MuMIn
 (https://cran.r-project.org/package=MuMIn).