8 research outputs found
Author Correction: The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation
Reduced Dpp expression accelerates inflammation-mediated neurodegeneration through activated glial cells during altered innate immune response in Drosophila
The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation
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
Publisher Correction: The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation
n/
the distributions of all reptile species
the polygonal and points (buffered or modeled to produce MCPs and alpha hulls as described in the methods) for all reptile specie