{"id":847569,"date":"2026-08-08T04:24:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/847569\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:24:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:24:30","slug":"ibizas-invasive-snakes-are-doing-more-than-hunting-lizards-researchers-found-their-spread-is-accelerating-reducing-the-time-to-local-lizard-loss-from-more-than-10-years-to-about-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/847569\/","title":{"rendered":"Ibiza\u2019s invasive snakes are doing more than hunting lizards; researchers found their spread is accelerating, reducing the time to local lizard loss from more than 10 years to about 3 |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ibiza\u2019sThe horseshoe whip snake has spread across Ibiza since arriving in imported olive trees in the early 2000s. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons Ibiza is better known for its beaches and nightlife than for invasive snakes. However, an ecological disaster has been occurring quietly on the island for the past two decades. A new study, \u2018Real-time invasion dynamics reveal the drivers of predator spread and prey extirpation on an island<\/a>,\u2019 published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, has tracked an invasive snake as it spreads across the island, and the findings are striking.A snake that hitchhiked on an olive treeThe invasive species is the horseshoe whip snake, Hemorrhois hippocrepis, a non-native snake to Ibiza. Research titled \u2018Swimming snakes wipe out endemic lizards from Mediterranean islets<\/a>,\u2019 published in the journal Ecology, notes that the snake was introduced to the territory at the beginning of the 2000s as a stowaway on imported olive trees. Once on the island, with no natural predators to hold it back, the snake began to spread.That spread has not slowed down. The Royal Society research used over 5,000 georeferenced records of snake captures and lizard sightings collected during two decades of field surveys and standardised transects. Researchers found that people also move snakes to new parts of the island, not just the snakes\u2019 own natural spread, which has helped the invasion advance faster.The lizard caught in the middleThe primary victim of this invasion is the Ibiza wall lizard, known as Podarcis pityusensis, an endemic and colourful reptile found nowhere else on Earth. The Ibiza wall lizard is considered a keystone species. It preys on insects, pollinates flowers, and disseminates plant seeds in the island’s environment. Losing it could affect other parts of the island\u2019s ecosystem.The lizard makes up more than half of the snake’s diet in Ibiza, according to the Ecology study. The impact of such high levels of predation pressure, along with the fact that the lizard did not evolve any defence mechanism against this new predator, has significantly reduced its population. In 2024, the IUCN reclassified this lizard as Endangered, which is a significant change from its previous classification.\"Image\"<\/p>\n

A keystone species, the lizard pollinates flowers, eats insects and disperses seeds across the island. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

The extinction clock is now ticking three times fasterScientists compared how much time passed between the arrival of snakes in a certain region and the extinction of lizards in that region. In the regions that the snake invaded at the very beginning, lizards managed to survive for about 10 years. In the recently invaded zones, the extinction of lizards occurred in about three years, and this shift happened over a study period of just over a decade.The scientists call this a non-linear acceleration, which means that not only does this destruction continue, but it accelerates at the same time. It was also revealed that in the regions where the snake had been invading for quite some time already, snakes were becoming increasingly difficult to capture and were in a poor body condition, which is an indication of food shortage in the regions that the snake invaded initially.Culling thousands of snakes, and the invasion still winsLocal authorities have not been sitting idle. The Ecology study reports that over 12,000 invasive snakes have been removed from Ibiza since 2016 under a control program. Despite the scale of the control effort, the species\u2019 range has continued to grow and has recently expanded faster.\"Image\"<\/p>\n

More than 12,000 snakes have been culled on Ibiza since 2016, but the invasion keeps expanding. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

The Ecology study documents another troubling twist. Researchers have recorded snakes swimming between Ibiza and nearby islets, spreading the danger of extinction to the lizard populations which lived undisturbed for thousands of years.Why this matters beyond one Spanish islandAlthough it may sound like a small story about a lizard on a holiday island, biologists say it offers a preview of what can happen elsewhere when non-native predators establish themselves without natural controls. Islands are especially vulnerable because native species often evolve without predators, leaving them with few defences when a new one turns up.The Royal Society study’s authors note that this has real management implications. Because the threat intensifies as an invasion matures, they suggest that control efforts focused only on long-invaded areas may not be enough on their own, and that catching new invasion fronts early could matter just as much. Whether that is enough to outpace a threat that keeps getting faster remains an open question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The horseshoe whip snake has spread across Ibiza since arriving in imported olive trees in the early 2000s.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,418208,20558,9314,418207,418206,128,338],"class_list":["post-847569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ecological-impact-of-invasive-species","tag-endangered-species","tag-horseshoe-whip-snake","tag-ibiza-invasive-snakes","tag-ibiza-wall-lizard","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}