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 × 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 × 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.
The amphibian fauna of the Kingdom of Morocco was traditionally regarded as poor and closely related to its European counterpart. However, an increase in research during the last decades revealed a considerable degree of endemism amongst Moroccan amphibians, as well as phenotypic and genotypic inter- and intraspecific divergence. Despite this increase in knowledge, a comprehensible overview is lacking while several systematic issues have remained unresolved. We herein present a contemporary overview of the distribution, taxonomy and biogeography of Moroccan amphibians. Fourteen fieldtrips were made by the authors and colleagues between 2000 and 2012, which produced a total of 292 new distribution records. Furthermore, based on the results of the present work, we (i) review the systematics of the genus Salamandra in Morocco, including the description of a new subspecies from the Rif- and Middle Atlas Mountains, Salamandra algira splendens ssp. nov.; (ii) present data on intraspecific morphological variability of Pelobates varaldiiand Pleurodeles waltl in Morocco; (iii) attempt to resolve the phylogenetic position of Bufo brongersmai and erect a new genus for this species, Barbarophryne gen. nov.; (iv) summarize and assess the availability of tadpole-specific characteristics and bioacoustical data, and (v) summarize natural history data.
In the last decade, taxonomic studies have drastically increased the number of species known to inhabit the Arabian deserts. While ongoing phylogenetic studies continue to identify new species and high levels of intraspecific genetic diversity, few studies have yet explored the biogeographic patterns in this arid region using an integrative approach. In the present work, we apply different phylogenetic methods to infer relationships within the Palearctic naked‐toed geckos. We specifically address for the first time the taxonomy and biogeography of Bunopus spatalurus Anderson, 1901, from Arabia using multilocus concatenated and species tree phylogenies, haplotype networks and morphology. We also use species distribution modelling and phylogeographic interpolation to explore the phylogeographic structure of Bunopus spatalurus hajarensis in the Hajar Mountains and the roles of climatic stability and possible biogeographic barriers on lineage occurrence and contact zones in this arid mountain endemism hot spot. According to the inferred topology recovered using concatenated and species tree methods, the genus ‘Bunopus’ is polyphyletic. Bunopus tuberculatus and B. blanfordii form a highly supported clade closely related to Crossobamon orientalis, while the two subspecies of ‘Bunopus’ spatalurus branch together as an independent highly supported clade that diverged during the Miocene according to our estimations. Within B. s. hajarensis, three geographically structured clades can be recognized that according to our estimations diverged during the Late Miocene to Pliocene. The paleodistribution models indicate climatic stability during the Late Pleistocene and the lineage occurrence, and predicted contact zones obtained from phylogeographic interpolation therefore probably result from the older splits of the groups when these lineages originated in allopatry. As demonstrated by the results of the multilocus molecular phylogenetic analyses and the topological test carried out in this study, the genus ‘Bunopus’ is not monophyletic. To resolve this, we resurrect the genus Trachydactylus Haas and Battersby, 1959; for the species formerly referred to as Bunopus spatalurus. Considering the morphological differences, the high level of genetic differentiation in the 12S mitochondrial gene and the results of the phylogenetic and the cmos haplotype network analysis, we elevate Trachydactylus spatalurus hajarensis to the species level Trachydactylus hajarensis (Arnold, 1980).
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