Global knowledge gaps of herptile responses to land transformation

Abstract

Understanding how species respond to land transformation is an essential step toward the development of effective conservation policies. This is especially urgent in deforestation hotspots, and for those groups particularly sensitive to changes in land cover. However, the scarcity of data on population trends is among the most pervasive shortfalls in biodiversity knowledge, hampering the design of effective conservation. This deficiency is commonly addressed by comparing population sizes between natural and transformed land‐cover types. Here we mapped the global knowledge (and knowledge gaps) about changes in the abundance of amphibian and reptile populations in natural and transformed land cover, with an emphasis on deforestation hotspots. Notably, our results show that there is scant information even about this proxy of population trends. On average, data are absent for 75% of amphibians and 83% of reptiles within each grid cell worldwide. Moreover, such information is extremely rare for deforestation fronts, and that which does exist comes from populations external to these areas. Strategic investment to fill these data gaps, especially in deforestation hotspots, is a crucial step to guide conservation policy making.

Biogeography of the world’s worst invasive species has spatially biased knowledge gaps but is predictable

“…This lesson may seem obvious given similar findings exist for other biodiversity analyses (e.g., Meyer et al 2015, Nori et al 2023). To our knowledge, it has not been reported globally among many, invasive species; perhaps related to the common focus on single species .…”

“…Our answer to the first question critically evaluates available data accrued since 2000, at relatively fine spatial scale (not per country) and available in publicly available online data bases (other data may exist elsewhere). Spatial knowledge gaps are expected (e.g., Meyer et al 2015, Nori et al 2023), but not yet described for this list of notorious invasive species. Because we sought global patterns for the listed species, we did not separate putative native and non-native distributions.…”

The implications of estimating rarity in Brazilian reptiles from GBIF data based on contributions from citizen science versus research institutions

“…In the face of the current global biodiversity crisis, understanding species distributions and population sizes is increasingly critical (Hortal et al, 2015;Nori et al, 2023). Data on species distribution can elucidate the environmental requirements of a species by examining its fundamental niche (Kearney, 2019;Takola & Schielzeth, 2022).…”

Global shortfalls of knowledge on anuran tadpoles

“…However, there are still significant gaps and biases in the available information often hindering accurate applications 2 . Furthermore, several essential aspects of biodiversity still need to be studied, with scarce or nonexistent information available 3 . This lack of understanding is particularly true for life history traits, with fragmentary data for most taxa but especially those with complex life cycles.…”