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Reptile species persistence under climate change and direct human threats in north-western Argentina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2017

JAVIER NORI ,
GERARDO C. LEYNAUD ,
JOSÉ VOLANTE ,
CRISTIAN S. ABDALA ,
GUSTAVO J. SCROCCHI ,
CLARITA RODRÍGUEZ-SOTO ,
ROBERT L. PRESSEY  and
RAFAEL LOYOLA
JAVIER NORI*
Affiliation:
Centro de Zoología Aplicada and Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal (CONICET), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina
GERARDO C. LEYNAUD
Affiliation:
Centro de Zoología Aplicada and Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal (CONICET), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina
JOSÉ VOLANTE
Affiliation:
Laboratorio de Teledetección y SIG, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Salta. Ruta Nacional 68, Km 172 Cerrillos, Salta, Argentina
CRISTIAN S. ABDALA
Affiliation:
UEL Unidad Ejecutora Lillo, Conicet, FML – Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina
GUSTAVO J. SCROCCHI
Affiliation:
UEL Unidad Ejecutora Lillo, Conicet, FML – Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina
CLARITA RODRÍGUEZ-SOTO
Affiliation:
Centro de Estudios e Investigación en Desarrollo Sustentable. Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Toluca, México
ROBERT L. PRESSEY
Affiliation:
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia
RAFAEL LOYOLA
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Biogeografia da Conservação, Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil Brazilian Research Network on Climate Change – Rede Clima, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil
*
*Correspondence: Dr Javier Nori email: javiernori@gmail.com
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Summary

Protected areas have been established historically in residual places where the potential for extractive uses is low, implying that places at risk are usually under-protected. Argentina is no exception, with few protected areas established in productive regions that are prone to conversion. Here, using reptiles as a study group and considering the most important human threats in north-western Argentina, we estimated priority conservation areas where we expect species to persist in the face of climate change and land conversion. Protected areas cover no more than 9% of the study region, but represent less than 15% of reptile distributions. There are great opportunities for improving the conservation status in the region by protecting only 8% more of north-western Argentina, with the level of species protection inside the protected area network increasing almost four-fold, reaching 43% of species distributions on average and 59% of the distributions of threatened reptiles. Fortunately, the highest diversity of reptiles in the region does not match the places targeted for agriculture expansion. Our findings suggest that future prioritization schemes should embrace other groups that are especially diverse in the Chaco ecoregion, which overlaps with our study area.

Keywords

agriculture expansionland-use changespecies distribution modelssystematic conservation planningthreatened species
Type
Non-Thematic Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 45 , Issue 1: Thematic section. Humans and Island Environments , March 2018 , pp. 83 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

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Footnotes

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892917000285

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