Adaptable Lizards :

As different as their faces are, these lizards’ choices of habitat vary greatly as well. That’s why the team is also researching how lizards, especially C. tennentii, choose where they live, which includes factors such as climate, prey availability, and lack of human threat.

Ceratophora lizards’ current distribution—and scarcity—is shaped largely by historical and current agricultural practices, Somaweera said.

During the late 18th century, “expansive forest cover in Sri Lanka’s central mountain regions began to give way to ‘colonial landscape,’ including land used for cultivation of coffee and then tea, destroying most of the historic range of the rhino-horned C. stoddartii,” he said.

For the leaf-nosed C. tennetii, which is found only in the Knuckles mountain range, the current culprits of habitat loss are tea, pine, and cardamom plantations, he said.

He also said that Sri Lanka has a high population density, “by far the highest among the global diversity hotspots.” In the wet zone where Ceratophora lives, it’s approximately double the national average. The growing population means more land is needed for agriculture and other endeavors.

“On a positive note,” Somaweera said, “our work shows that these lizards are quite adaptable, and as long as there is sufficient canopy cover and [climatically favorable] pockets remaining, they could maintain stable populations in these disturbed habitats.”