Representation of herpetofauna in wildlife research journals

Christoffel, Rebecca; Lepczyk, Christopher A.

doi:10.1002/jwmg.321

Cited by 24 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Despite taxonomic bias in publication success against ectotherms, in particular amphibians and reptiles (Bonnet et al, 2002;Christoffel and Lepczyk, 2012), knowledge indices for turtles in the United States and Canada have increased exponentially in the recent century ( fig. 1 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A quantitative analysis of the state of knowledge of turtles of the United States and Canada

Lovich

Ennen

2013

Amphib Reptilia

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bstract. The "information age" ushered in an explosion of knowledge and access to knowledge that continues to revolutionize society. Knowledge about turtles, as measured by number of published papers, has been growing at an exponential rate since the eariy 1970s, a phenomenon mirrored in all scientific disciplines. Although knowledge about turtles, as measured by number of citations for papers in scientific journals, has been growing rapidly, this taxonomic group remains highly imperiled suggesting that knowledge is not always successfully translated into effective conservation of turtles. We reviewed the body of literature on turtles of the United States and Canada and found that: 1 ) the number of citations is biased toward large-bodied species, 2) the number of citations is biased toward wide-ranging species, and 3) conservation status has little effect on the accumulation of knowledge for a species, especially after removing the effects of body size or range size. The dispersion of knowledge, measured by Shannon Weiner diversity and evenness indices across species, was identical from 1994 to 2009 suggesting that poorly studied species remained poorly-studied species while well-studied species remained well studied. Several species listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (e.g., Pseudemys alahamensis, Slemolherus depressus, and Graptemys ocutifera) remain poorly studied with the estimated number of citations for each ranging from only 13-24. The low number of citations for these species could best be explained by their restricted distribution and/or their smaller size. Despite the exponential increase in knowledge of turtles in the United States and Canada, no species of turtle listed under the Endangered Species Act has ever been delisted for reason of recovery. Therefore, increased knowledge does not necessarily contribute appreciably to recovery of threatened turtles.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We did not include the title of each account but did include spaces between paragraphs in the measurements. Measuring text to estimate accumulated knowledge was also used by Christoffel and Lepczyk (2012) for amphibians and reptiles and Lindeman (in press) for map turtles {Graptemvs).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A quantitative analysis of the state of knowledge of turtles of the United States and Canada

Lovich

Ennen

2013

Amphib Reptilia

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“…Accordingly, although a range of taxonomic groups has been investigated, research is strongly biased towards vascular plants and arthropods. Such taxonomic bias is common across ecological research [36][37][38]. As not every species can colonize roofs, it is to be expected that some (e.g., flightless) taxa will be missing or be less common.…”

Section: Patterns In Green Roof Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity Impact of Green Roofs and Constructed Wetlands as Progressive Eco-Technologies in Urban Areas

2019

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The total amount of sealed surfaces is increasing in many urban areas, which presents a challenge for sewerage systems and wastewater treatment plants when extreme rainfall events occur. One promising solution approach is the application of decentralized eco-technologies for water management such as green roofs and constructed wetlands, which also have the potential to improve urban biodiversity. We review the effects of these two eco-technologies on species richness, abundance and other facets of biodiversity (e.g., functional diversity). We find that while green roofs support fewer species than ground-level habitats and thus are not a substitute for the latter, the increase in green roof structural diversity supports species richness. Species abundance benefits from improved roof conditions (e.g., increased substrate depth). Few studies have investigated the functional diversity of green roofs so far, but the typical traits of green roof species have been identified. The biodiversity of animals in constructed wetlands can be improved by applying animal-aided design rather than by solely considering engineering requirements. For example, flat and barrier-free shore areas, diverse vegetation, and heterogeneous surroundings increase the attractiveness of constructed wetlands for a range of animals. We suggest that by combining and making increasing use of these two eco-technologies in urban areas, biodiversity will benefit.

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“…Presence-only methods, which do not require costly and difficult-to-collect absence data (Gu & Swihart 2004), can be used to model the same environmental relationships as presence-absence methods provided that biases are accounted for (Elith et al 2011). This is especially useful for M. fulvius because, as is the case for most snake species, they are difficult to detect due to their limited active periods and cryptic behavior (Christoffel & Lepcyzk 2012;Guimaraes et al 2014). In addition, snake species are often patchily distributed and have low population sizes (Segura et al 2007) Manuscript to be reviewed and some locality points were provided directly from museum curators for collections that…”

Section: Species Distribution Modeling -Current Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

Peer Review #1 of "Is the future already here? The impact of climate change on the distribution of the eastern coral snake (Micrurus fulvius) (v0.1)"

Jayathilake¹

2018

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Anthropogenic climate change is a significant global driver of species distribution change. Although many species have undergone range expansion at their poleward limits, data on several taxonomic groups are still lacking. A common method for studying range shifts is using species distribution models to evaluate current, and predict future, distributions. Notably, many sources of 'current' climate data used in species distribution modeling use the years 1950-2000 to calculate climatic averages. However, this does not account for recent (post 2000) climate change. This study examines the influence of climate change on the eastern coral snake (Micrurus fulvius). Specifically, we: (1) identified the current range and suitable environment of M. fulvius in the Southeastern United States, (2) investigated the potential impacts of climate change on the distribution of M. fulvius, and (3) evaluated the utility of future models in predicting recent (2001-2015) records. We used the species distribution modeling program Maxent and compared both current (1950-2000) and future (2050) climate conditions. Future climate models showed a shift in the distribution of suitable habitat across a significant portion of the range; however, results also suggest that much of the Southeastern United States will be outside the range of current conditions, suggesting that there may be no-analog environments in the future. Most strikingly, future models were more effective than the current models at predicting recent records, suggesting that range shifts may already be occurring. These results have implications for both M. fulvius and its Batesian mimics. More broadly, we recommend future Maxent studies consider using future climate data along with current data to better estimate the current distribution.

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Representation of herpetofauna in wildlife research journals

Cited by 24 publications

References 34 publications

A quantitative analysis of the state of knowledge of turtles of the United States and Canada

A quantitative analysis of the state of knowledge of turtles of the United States and Canada

Biodiversity Impact of Green Roofs and Constructed Wetlands as Progressive Eco-Technologies in Urban Areas

Peer Review #1 of "Is the future already here? The impact of climate change on the distribution of the eastern coral snake (Micrurus fulvius) (v0.1)"

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