For the first time, researchers have completed an ‘atlas of life’ – a global review and map of every vertebrate on Earth.
A team of researchers produced a catalog and atlas of the world’s reptiles, and by linking it with existing maps for birds, mammals and amphibians, the team has found many new areas where conservation action is vital.
The researchers say that in order to best protect wildlife, it’s important to know where species live, so the right action can be taken and the scarce funding allocated in the right places.
Richness of all tetrapods (reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals). Scale bar values represent species richness. grey areas denote terrestrial regions devoid of species in a particular group. Blue colors denote regions with few species and red ones denote regions with many species
WHAT IS THE MAP FOR?
For the first time, researchers have completed an ‘atlas of life’ – a global review and map of every vertebrate on Earth.
A team of researchers produced a catalog and atlas of the world’s reptiles, and by linking it with existing maps for birds, mammals and amphibians, the team has found many new areas where conservation action is vital.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are currently classifying the species featured in the map with a rating, from ‘critically endangered’ to ‘least concern.’
Once it’s complete, the interactive map will be available for public access.
The researchers hope that this interactive map will allow a range of stakeholders, including countries, conservation organizations and businesses and individuals, to understand the biodiversity in their surrounding environment, how important it is and what they can do it protect it.
Maps showing the habitats of almost all birds, mammals and amphibians have been completed since 2006, but it was thought that many reptile species were too poorly known to be mapped.
But a team of 39 scientists, led by researchers at the University of Oxford and Tel Aviv University, produced a new reptile atlas, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The reptile atlas covers more than 10,000 species of snakes, lizards and turtles/tortoises, and that data completes the world map of 31,000 species of humanity’s closest relatives, including around 5,000 mammals, 10,000 birds and 6,000 frogs and salamanders.
The new map has revealed unexpected trends and regions of biodiversity fragility for reptiles.
They include the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant, inland arid South Africa, the Asian steppes, the central Australian deserts, the Brazilian caatinga scrubland, and the high southern Andes.
‘Lizards especially tend to have weird distributions and often like hot and dry places, so many of the newly identified conservation priority areas are in drylands and deserts,’ said Dr Uri Roll, a researcher at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and the lead author of the paper.
‘These don’t tend to be priorities for birds or mammals, so we couldn’t have guessed them in advance.’
‘On the one hand, finding vital areas in arid regions is a good thing because the land is fairly cheap,’ said Dr Richard Grenyer, Associate Professor in Biodiversity and Biogeography at Oxford University, and a co-author of the study.
‘But deserts and drylands are also home to lots of other modern activities, such as major irrigation projects, huge new solar power developments, and sometimes widespread land degradation, war and conflict.
Species richness of reptile groups: all reptiles (b), lizards (c), snakes (d) and turtles (e). Grey areas denote terrestrial regions devoid of species in a particular group. Blue colors denote regions with few species and red ones denote regions with many species (note that the scale differs between panels)
‘This makes them very challenging environment for conservationists to work.’
These maps have also allowed conservationists to ask whether environmental efforts to date have been invested in the right way, and how they could be used most effectively.
‘Thanks to tools like our atlas, scientists can for the first time look at the terrestrial Earth in its entirety, and make informed decisions about how to use conservation funding,’ said Dr Grenyer.
‘This is not to say that the work done to date has been inaccurate: based on our knowledge at the time, conservationists have often made some really good decisions.
This infographic show the regions of the world which have gone up the most in conservation importance now we know where all the snakes and lizards can be found
‘But now conservation has the data and tools required to bring planning up to the same level as the businesses and governments who might have an eye on land for other uses.
‘Maybe we’re actually a bit better, and we’re doing it in the open.’
Dr Shai Meiri, a professor at Tel Aviv University who first planned the project more than ten years ago, said: ‘Mapping the distributions of all reptiles was considered too difficult to tackle.
‘But thanks to a team of experts on the lizards and snakes of some of the most poorly known regions of the world we managed to achieve this, and hopefully contribute to the conservation of these often elusive vertebrates that suffer from persecution and prejudice.’
In each panel the lightest color denotes the 10% of 48.25 × 48.25 km grid-cells with the highest numbers of species, and as the colors get darker they represent the top 7.5%, 5% and richest 2.5% cells. Panels show all reptiles (a), lizards (b), snakes (c) and turtles (d)
The mean change in rank between prioritizations with and without reptiles per ecoregion (red, ecoregions that become more important due to the inclusion of reptile information; blue, ecoregions becoming less important)
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are currently classifying the species featured in the map with a rating, from ‘critically endangered’ to ‘least concern.’
Once it’s complete, the interactive map will be available for public access.
The researchers hope that this interactive map will allow a range of stakeholders, including countries, conservation organizations and businesses and individuals, to understand the biodiversity in their surrounding environment, how important it is and what they can do it protect it.
A rare Woma Python on red sand with some grass in the desert of Australia’s outback. A new map has revealed unexpected trends and regions of biodiversity fragility for reptiles. The area with the highest levels of species richness for snakes lies in the central Australian deserts
