The high rate of amphibian endemism and the severe habitat modification in the Caribbean islands make them an ideal place to test if the current protected areas network might protect this group. In this study, we model distribution and map species richness of the 40 amphibian species from eastern Cuba with the objectives of identify hotspots, detect gaps in species representation in protected areas, and select additional areas to fill these gaps. We used two modeling methods, Maxent and Habitat Suitability Models, to reach a consensus distribution map for each species, then calculate species richness by combining specific models and finally performed gap analyses for species and hotspots. Our results showed that the models were robust enough to predict species distributions and that most of the amphibian hotspots were represented in reserves, but 50 percent of the species were incompletely covered and Eleutherodactylus rivularis was totally uncovered by the protected areas. We identified 1441 additional km 2 (9.9% of the study area) that could be added to the current protected areas, allowing the representation of every species and all hotspots. Our results are relevant for the conservation planning in other Caribbean islands, since studies like this could contribute to fill the gaps in the existing protected areas and to design a future network. Both cases would benefit from modeling amphibian species distribution using available data, even if they are incomplete, rather than relying only in the protection of known or suspected hotspots.

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La Bijirita de Connecticut (Oporornis agilis) es una especie de ave migratoria neotropical. La literatura y los mapas de distribución publicados por eBird sugieren que la especie utiliza la región del Caribe durante la migración otoñal y primaveral. La isla de Cuba solo posee un reporte de la especie en la cayería norte de Ciego de Ávila y Camagüey. Fue capturado un individuo macho en redes de niebla pertenecientes a la Estación de Anillamiento Permanente Juan Christoph Gundlach, ubicada en la Reserva Ecológica Siboney Juticí, del municipio de Santiago de Cuba, provincia Santiago de Cuba. Este constituye el primer reporte de la especie en la zona oriental de Cuba. La falta de avistamientos de Bijirita de Connecticut en Cuba puede estar condicionada por dos factores principalmente: la baja densidad de individuos en la isla durante la migración o la posible confusión de los ornitólogos cubanos con especies similares.