The roles of environmental factors on reptile richness in Iran

Abstract

Iran is usually considered as a bridge between Oriental and African zoogeographical region, and also the 20th global biodiversity hotspot. Herpetofauna of the Iranian Plateau has a high diversity compared to other areas in the region and has always been interesting for herpetologists in terms of biogeography, ecology and zoogeography. In this study, distribution maps of 215 terrestrial reptilian species (of which 50 were endemic to Iran) were digitized and the species richness pattems were correlated with 13 environmental factors using spatial analyses methods. Our results showed that the hotspot regions for all reptilian species are concentrated on south and southwest of Iran. This result is consistent with the Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot. Based on spatial analyses, species richness in the area is affected by seven environmental variables which are associated with temperature and probably interpreted as the most important factor on reptile richness in Iran.

Reptile species richness associated to ecological and historical variables in Iran

“…Altogether, our results suggest that lizard richness can be explained by current and past climate in Iran. There are studies which quantified the role of ecological factors on reptile richness in southwest Asia (for instance [29][30][31] ), while historical drivers of reptile richness remain poorly understood 31 . For better understanding the drivers of current species distribution, we need to look at past and investigate the role of historical factors on species distribution.…”

“…Environmental variables. We selected seven variables (Table 2) related to climate: topography, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), climate change velocity and geology which we expected to be important in shaping distribution of reptiles [22][23][24]30,[32][33][34][35]3845,48,49,87 . To quantify climate effect on reptile distribution, we used temperature and annual precipitation 13 .…”

“…Based on these studies, climate was the most important determinant of reptile distribution in Iran. Climate was also identified as a most influential variable in shaping reptile richness in the country 30 . However, there is a knowledge gap in the ecology and distribution of lizard species in Iran 44 , 45 , 49 .…”

“…In this study, we mapped the species distribution of all lizards in Iran and quantified reptile richness. We associated species richness to ecological drivers of reptile distributions in Iran 30 , but considered in addition Quaternary climatic oscillations and mountains uplifting events. We had the following expectations: The age of mountain uplifting have shaped topography as well as Quaternary glaciation should be associated to the present diversity of lizard species in Iran.…”

The global biogeography of lizard functional groups

“…Although several studies have examined regional lizard richness patterns (e.g., Hosseinzadeh, Aliabadian, Rastegar‐Pouyani, & Rastegar‐Pouyani, ; Kissling, Blach‐Overgaard, Zwaan, & Wagner, ; Lewin et al, , Tallowin, Allison, Algar, Kraus, & Meiri, ; Pincheira‐Donoso, Tregenza, Butlin, & Hodgson, ), the global richness pattern of all known lizard species has only recently been identified (Roll et al, ). Only a few studies have examined richness patterns by deconstructing them according to species' traits (by morphological traits: Scheibe, 1987; taxonomy: Powney, Grenyer, Orme, Owens, & Meiri, ; range size: Lewin et al, ; activity time: Vidan et al, ).…”