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Biomass associated with low upstream emissions offers cost-effective renewable arbon for negative emissions and production of chemicals, aviation and shipping fuels, reducing the need for more costly options like direct air capture. Policy support for sustainable biomass use alongside emerging technologies reduces energy system costs and the risk of missing emissions targets.

© This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Deposited by shareyourpaper.org and openaccessbutton.org. We've taken reasonable steps to ensure this content doesn't violate copyright. However, if you think it does you can request a takedown by emailing help@openaccessbutton.org.

Foraging opportunities can be unpredictable. When foragers face a choice between resources that vary in predictability, foraging decisions not only depend on the profitability of food but also on their physiological state. This risk-sensitive foraging approach, in which animals take greater foraging risks when starving, remains relatively untested in reptiles compared to other taxa. We tested the risk-sensitive foraging theory in the tropical lizard, Psammophilus dorsalis, by manipulating energy budgets (satiated vs. 48-hour starved) and measuring foraging preferences for options that differed in rewards: constant (2 mealworms) vs. variable (0 or 4 mealworms). We find that satiated lizards were risk averse to variability in reward amounts and chose the constant food option more frequently than the variable option. By contrast, starved lizards were risk prone and chose the variable reward option more often than the constant one. At the end of 28 foraging trials, these strategies resulted in both starved and satiated groups achieving similar net resource gains. As new support for risk-sensitive foraging in a tropical reptile species, these results provide insight on how resource uncertainty influences foraging strategies. For lizards in the tropics, which have high energy requirements year-round, risk-sensitive foraging could be an effective strategy in stochastic environments.