@article{
author = "Sillero, Neftali and Campos, Joao and Bonardi, Anna and Corti, Claudia and Creemers, Raymond and Crochet, Pierre-Andre and Crnobrnja-Isailović, Jelka and Denoel, Mathieu and Ficetola, Gentile Francesco and Goncalves, Joao and Kuzmin, Sergei and Lymberakis, Petros and de Pous, Philip and Rodriguez, Ariel and Sindaco, Roberto and Speybroeck, Jeroen and Toxopeus, Bert and Vieites, David R. and Vences, Miguel",
year = "2014",
abstract = "A precise knowledge of the spatial distribution of taxa is essential for
decision-making processes in land management and biodiversity
conservation, both for present and under future global change scenarios.
This is a key base for several scientific disciplines (e. g.
macro-ecology, biogeography, evolutionary biology, spatial planning, or
environmental impact assessment) that rely on species distribution maps.
An atlas summarizing the distribution of European amphibians and
reptiles with 50 x 50 km resolution maps based on ca. 85 000 grid
records was published by the Societas Europaea Herpetologica (SEH) in
1997. Since then, more detailed species distribution maps covering large
parts of Europe became available, while taxonomic progress has led to a
plethora of taxonomic changes including new species descriptions. To
account for these progresses, we compiled information from different
data sources: published in books and websites, ongoing national atlases,
personal data kindly provided to the SEH, the 1997 European Atlas, and
the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Databases were
homogenised, deleting all information except species names and
coordinates, projected to the same coordinate system (WGS84) and
transformed into a 50 x 50 km grid. The newly compiled database
comprises more than 384 000 grid and locality records distributed across
40 countries. We calculated species richness maps as well as maps of
Corrected Weighted Endemism and defined species distribution types (i.e.
groups of species with similar distribution patterns) by hierarchical
cluster analysis using Jaccard's index as association measure. Our
analysis serves as a preliminary step towards an interactive, dynamic
and online distributed database system (NA2RE system) of the current
spatial distribution of European amphibians and reptiles. The NA2RE
system will serve as well to monitor potential temporal changes in their
distributions. Grid maps of all species are made available along with
this paper as a tool for decision-making and conservation-related
studies and actions. We also identify taxonomic and geographic gaps of
knowledge that need to be filled, and we highlight the need to add
temporal and altitudinal data for all records, to allow tracking
potential species distribution changes as well as detailed modelling of
the impacts of land use and climate change on European amphibians and
reptiles.",
journal = "Amphibia-Reptilia",
title = "Updated distribution and biogeography of amphibians and reptiles of
Europe",
number = "1",
volume = "35",
doi = "10.1163/15685381-00002935",
pages = "1-31"
}
