Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change

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 anal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; p. 1389
Main Authors:	Mi, Chunrong, Ma, Liang, Yang, Mengyuan, Li, Xinhai, Meiri, Shai, Roll, Uri, Oskyrko, Oleksandra, Pincheira-Donoso, Daniel, Harvey, Lilly P., Jablonski, Daniel, Safaei-Mahroo, Barbod, Ghaffari, Hanyeh, Smid, Jiri, Jarvie, Scott, Kimani, Ronnie Mwangi, Masroor, Rafaqat, Kazemi, Seyed Mahdi, Nneji, Lotanna Micah, Fokoua, Arnaud Marius Tchassem, Tasse Taboue, Geraud C., Bauer, Aaron, Nogueira, Cristiano, Meirte, Danny, Chapple, David G., Das, Indraneil, Grismer, Lee, Avila, Luciano Javier, Ribeiro Júnior, Marco Antônio, Tallowin, Oliver J. S., Torres-Carvajal, Omar, Wagner, Philipp, Ron, Santiago R., Wang, Yuezhao, Itescu, Yuval, Nagy, Zoltán Tamás, Wilcove, David S., Liu, Xuan, Du, Weiguo
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 13-03-2023 Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio
Subjects:	631/158/672 704/172/4081 Amphibians Animals Biodiversity Climate Change Conservation Conservation of Natural Resources Ecosystem Effectiveness Extinct species Geographical distribution Herpetofauna Humanities and Social Sciences multidisciplinary Protected areas Protected species Reptiles Reptiles & amphibians Science Science (multidisciplinary) Wildlife conservation
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Summary:	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. The effectiveness of protected areas under climate change is debated. Here, the authors analyse the potential effectiveness of protected areas for conserving over 70% of extant amphibian and reptile species under present and future climate scenarios.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	2041-1723 2041-1723
DOI:	10.1038/s41467-023-36987-y