—Earth was a pretty durable spaceship, but we have managed to trash its life support systems, the atmosphere, and the oceans. Humans have also destroyed vast areas of habitats and !"#$%&'(&)*%#'+*,(-&"./*0&*-#1&*%,)23&)* (-&*#(%,.4-&"&*#')* 2'*),2'$*.,*-#1&* 2'5"&#.&)* (-&* greenhouse effect, which has changed the climate to produce ever increasing maximum temperatures. Increased temperatures t...

Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) occurs in all major reptile lineages, but the selective forces and physiological mechanisms that link sex to incubation temperature may differ among and within those groups. Different models for TSD evolution make different predictions about when offspring sex will respond to environmental cues. Although TSD has evolved in several lizard lineages, t...

Population densities of birds and mammals have been shown to decrease with body mass at approximately the same rate as metabolic rates increase, indicating that energetic needs constrain endotherm population densities. In ectotherms, the exponential increase of metabolic rate with body temperature suggests that environmental temperature may additionally constrain population densities. Here we t...

We report three randomised and pre-registered experiments examining the effects of narrative fiction (vs. non-fiction vs. expository non-fiction) on concern for animal welfare. In Experiment 1a (N = 363) there was no significant increase in welfare or willingness to donate an charity among participants who read a text about monkey's plight texts monkey). 1b =121) greater after reading compared ...

Many lizard species use caudal autotomy to escape entrapment. Conspicuous coloration may increase the likelihood of being attacked, but if that attack can be directed towards the autotomous tail this may ultimately increase the chances of the lizard surviving a predatory attack. We tested the hypothesis that brightly-colored function to divert predatory attention away from the head and body usi...

The record of non-mosasaur squamates (Reptilia, Squamata) is sparse in the Cretaceus fossil record of Brazil and include six putative reports, three from the Aptian-Albian of the Araripe Basin (Tijubina pontei Bonfim-Júnior and Marques, Olindalacerta brasiliensis Evans and Yabumoto, and a lizard indet.) and three from the Upper Cretaceous of the Bauru Group (Pristiguana brasiliensis Estes and P...

We analysed sympatrically occurring specimens from Lizard Island, Queensland, Australia identified on shell characters as Naticarius onca (Röding, 1798) and found them molecularly separated into two distinct clades. Additionally, we obtained sequences from nine morphologically similar, randomly collected naticid egg masses (‘sand collars’) from Lizard Island and two other Queensland localities....

Defense behavior and tail loss in the endemic lizard Eurolophosaurus nanuzae (Squamata, Tropiduridae) from southeastern Brazil. Defense behavior of the endemic tropidurid lizard Eurolophosaurus nanuzae was studied in an area of rocky outcrops at Serra do Cipó, Minas Gerais State, southeastern Brazil. Tail loss aspects of this species were also studied in lizards from three populations (Diamanti...

The Mesopotamian Spiny-tailed Lizard Saara loricata (Blanford, 1874) (Figure S1) is distributed in Iran and Iraq (Papenfuss et al., 2009). In it found the Bushehr, Fars, Kohgiluyeh B...

Rhynchocephalians are a group of lizard-like diapsid reptiles that were very diverse during the Mesozoic but now restricted to single extant genus in New Zealand. Recent cladistic analyses ha...