Reptiles Magazine
Rise in temperatures on Japan's Izu islands caused Okada's five-lined skink to run faster.
January 9, 2021
A four decade study of Japan’s Okada’s five-lined skink (
Plestiodon latiscutatus) and its main predator, the Japanese four-lined rat snake (
Elaphe quadrivirgata), shows that higher body temperatures of the skink helps them run faster and more efficiently to escape from the snakes.
Researchers Ph.D student Félix Landry Yuan of the University of Hong Kong’s Research Division for Ecology & Biodiversity and Ph.D candidate Shun Ito of Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Life Science, published their research “
Predator presence and recent climatic warming raise body temperatures of island lizards” in the journal Ecology Letters. They continued the research of Professor Masami Hasegawa, who started the research in the early 1980s. Hasegawa launched the study when he noticed that the skinks behaved differently on Japan’s Izu islands without snakes. He visited the islands every year and took body temperatures of the reptiles as well as morphological measurements.