2016-12-23T18:52:10

Amphibians represent a group with a total diversity of 376 species for Mexico which places the country as the 5th richest in terms of amphibian biodiversity. A total of 16 families are present in Mexico including representatives of the 3 orders of amphibians. Salamanders of the family Plethodontidae with 117 species is the most diverse group followed by the family Hylidae with 96 species. In general, endemism is very high, with 7 of the 16 families with more than 50% of their species being endemic to Mexico including 3 genera of frogs and 4 of salamanders endemic to the country. The distribution of species by state highlights the richness in the southern states of Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz. The state of Oaxaca is the most diverse with a total of 140 species, the states of Chiapas with 100 species and Veracruz with 96 species occupy second and third places respectively. Currently amphibians are suffering their worst extinction crisis in their history, 43% of the species in Mexico are considered to be endangered or critically endangered.

que, hasta octubre de 2013, en México existen 864 especies de reptiles, descritas en 159 géneros y 40 familias que representan el 8.7% de los reptiles del mundo. De las 864 especies, 417 son lagartijas, 393 serpientes, 48 tortugas, 3 anfisbénidos y 3 cocodrilos. Se registraron 493 taxones endémicos para el país. Los estados con un mayor número de especies son: Oaxaca (262), Chiapas (220) y Veracruz (200), mientras que los estados con una fauna de reptiles menos diversa son: Tlaxcala (36 especies), Distrito Federal (39) y Guanajuato (43).

Traditionally, biodiversity conservation gap analyses have been focused on governmental protected areas (PAs). However, an increasing number of social initiatives in conservation (SICs) are promoting a new perspective for analysis. SICs include all of the efforts that society implements to conserve biodiversity, such as land protection, from private reserves to community zoning plans some of which have generated community-protected areas. This is the first attempt to analyze the status of conservation in Latin America when some of these social initiatives are included. The analyses were focused on amphibians because they are one of the most threatened groups worldwide. Mexico is not an exception, where more than 60% of its amphibians are endemic. We used a niche model approach to map the potential and real geographical distribution (extracting the transformed areas) of the endemic amphibians. Based on remnant distribution, all the species have suffered some degree of loss, but 36 species have lost more than 50% of their potential distribution. For 50 micro-endemic species we could not model their potential distribution range due to the small number of records per species, therefore the analyses were performed using these records directly. We then evaluated the efficiency of the existing set of governmental protected areas and established the contribution of social initiatives (private and community) for land protection for amphibian conservation. We found that most of the species have some proportion of their potential ecological niche distribution protected, but 20% are not protected at all within governmental PAs. 73% of endemic and 26% of micro-endemic amphibians are represented within SICs. However, 30 micro-endemic species are not represented within either governmental PAs or SICs. This study shows how the role of land conservation through social initiatives is therefore becoming a crucial element for an important number of species not protected by governmental PAs.