The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation

Roll, Uri; Feldman, Anat; Novosolov, Maria; Allison, Allen; Bauer, Aaron M.; Bernard, Rodolphe; Böhm, Monika; Castro-Herrera, Fernando; Chirio, Laurent; Collen, Ben; Colli, Guarino R.; Dabool, Lital; Das, Indraneil; Doan, Tiffany M.; Grismer, Lee L.; Hoogmoed, Marinus; Itescu, Yuval; Kraus, Fred; LeBreton, Matthew; Lewin, Amir; Martins, Marcio; Maza, Erez; Meirte, Danny; Nagy, Zoltán T.; de C. Nogueira, Cristiano; Pauwels, Olivier S.G.; Pincheira-Donoso, Daniel; Powney, Gary D.; Sindaco, Roberto; Tallowin, Oliver J.S.; Torres-Carvajal, Omar; Trape, Jean-François; Vidan, Enav; Uetz, Peter; Wagner, Philipp; Wang, Yuezhao; Orme, C. David L.; Grenyer, Richard; Meiri, Shai. 2017 The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1 (11). 1677-1682. 10.1038/s41559-017-0332-2

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0332-2

Abstract/Summary

The distributions of amphibians, birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities, and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity. In contrast, the global distributions of reptiles, representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, have been unavailable. This prevented the incorporation of reptiles into conservation planning and biased our understanding of the underlying processes governing global vertebrate biodiversity. Here, we present and analyse the global distribution of 10,064 reptile species (99% of extant terrestrial species). We show that richness patterns of the other three tetrapod classes are good spatial surrogates for species richness of all reptiles combined and of snakes, but characterize diversity patterns of lizards and turtles poorly. Hotspots of total and endemic lizard richness overlap very little with those of other taxa. Moreover, existing protected areas, sites of biodiversity significance and global conservation schemes represent birds and mammals better than reptiles. We show that additional conservation actions are needed to effectively protect reptiles, particularly lizards and turtles. Adding reptile knowledge to a global complementarity conservation priority scheme identifies many locations that consequently become important. Notably, investing resources in some of the world’s arid, grassland and savannah habitats might be necessary to represent all terrestrial vertebrates efficiently.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1038/s41559-017-0332-2
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Biodiversity (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	2397-334X
Additional Keywords:	biodiversity, conservation biology
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment
Date made live:	02 Nov 2017 14:24 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/518195

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.1038/s41559-017-0332-2

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

Biodiversity (Science Area 2017-)

ISSN:

2397-334X

Additional Keywords:

biodiversity, conservation biology

NORA Subject Terms:

Ecology and Environment