Research Info

Title	Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change
Type	JournalPaper
Keywords	Protected Areas, biodiversity conservation, amphibians, reptiles, worldwide
Abstract	Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here, we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conservation effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analyses reveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are currently distributed in PAs, and that this proportion will remain unaltered under future climate change. Indeed, loss of species’ distributional ranges will be lower inside PAs than outside them. Therefore, the proportion of effectively protected species is predicted to increase. However, over 7.8% of species currently occur outside PAs, and large spatial conservation gaps remain, mainly across tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, and across non-high-income countries. We also predict that more than 300 amphibian and 500 reptile species may go extinct under climate change over the course of the ongoing century. Our study highlights the importance of PAs in providing herpetofauna with refuge from climate change, and suggests ways to optimize PAs to better conserve biodiversity worldwide.
Researchers	Weiguo Du (Not In First Six Researchers), Xuan Liu (Not In First Six Researchers), David S. Wilcove (Not In First Six Researchers), Zoltán Tamás Nagy (Not In First Six Researchers), Yuval Itescu (Not In First Six Researchers), Yuezhao Wang (Not In First Six Researchers), Santiago R. Ron (Not In First Six Researchers), Philipp Wagner (Not In First Six Researchers), Omar Torres-Carvajal (Not In First Six Researchers), Oliver Tallowin (Not In First Six Researchers), Marco Antonio Ribeiro Junior (Not In First Six Researchers), Luciano Javier Avila (Not In First Six Researchers), Lee Grismer (Not In First Six Researchers), Indraneil Das (Not In First Six Researchers), David G. Chapple (Not In First Six Researchers), Danny Meirte (Not In First Six Researchers), Cristiano Nogueira (Not In First Six Researchers), Aaron Bauer (Not In First Six Researchers), Geraud C. Tasse Taboue (Not In First Six Researchers), Arnaud Marius Tchassem Fokoua (Not In First Six Researchers), Lotanna Micah Nneji (Not In First Six Researchers), Seyed Mahdi KAZEMI (Not In First Six Researchers), Rafaqat Masroor (Not In First Six Researchers), Ronnie Mwangi Kimani (Not In First Six Researchers), Scott Jarvie (Not In First Six Researchers), Jiri Smid (Not In First Six Researchers), Hanyeh Ghaffari (Not In First Six Researchers), Barbod Safaei Mahroo (Not In First Six Researchers), Daniel Jablonski (Not In First Six Researchers), Lilly P. Harvey (Not In First Six Researchers), Daniel Pincheira-Donoso (Not In First Six Researchers), Oleksandra Oskyrko (Not In First Six Researchers), Uri Roll (Not In First Six Researchers), Shai Meiri (Fifth Researcher), Xinhai Li (Fourth Researcher), Mengyuan Yang (Third Researcher), Liang Ma (Second Researcher), Chunrong Mi (First Researcher)