A global assessment of research on urban ecology of reptiles: patterns, gaps and future directions

Abstract

Global urban expansion has multiple impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Still, urban centres may play an important role in the conservation of reptiles, an undersampled, megadiverse and unevenly distributed group especially vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts. However, major gaps in research on the urban ecology of reptiles and species responses to urbanisation persist, which may limit our capacity to guide suitable conservation policies. We conducted a global systematic literature review to evaluate biogeographic, taxonomic and ecological research biases in the urban ecology of reptiles and ultimately to detect major gaps and steer future sampling efforts. Our database comprised 278 articles dealing with biological responses to urbanisation of 493 species across 45 countries, comprising 658 cases between a given species and specific biological response. Research on the urban ecology of reptiles was geographically and taxonomically biased. Developed countries within temperate regions were better sampled, whereas developing tropical and megadiverse countries were mostly undersampled or neglected. Among reptile orders, Testudines and Crocodylia were proportionally more studied than Squamata. Across lower groups within Squamata, lizards were present in most studies and were the biological model most commonly used. Studies evaluating biological responses associated with landscape-level processes, behaviour and/or population dynamics were prevalent, whereas conservation, human-reptile conflicts and wildlife management were the least considered topics. Our results show that research on urban ecology of reptiles is unevenly distributed across regions and lineages. Overcoming these major gaps is an important step towards the improvement of the conservation of reptiles worldwide under the upcoming biodiversity loss scenario. Beyond spreading sampling efforts across undersampled countries, taxa and research topics to meet conservation objectives, we recommend more multidisciplinary approaches to evaluate and compare the actual performance of reptiles in urban environments and to achieve the equilibrium between human well-being and species conservation.

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