Status and trends in the international wildlife trade in Chameleons with a focus on Tanzania.

Chameleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive group of reptiles, mainly found in Africa, which have high local endemism and face significant threats from the international wildlife trade. We review the scale and structure of international chameleon trade, with a focus on collection in and exports from Tanzania; a hotspot of chameleon diversity. Analysis used data from the CITES Trade Database 2000-2019, combined with assessment of online trade, and on-the-ground surveys in Tanzania in 2019. Between 2000 and 2019, 1,128,776 live chameleons from 108 species were reported as exported globally, with 193,093 of these (from 32 species) exported by Tanzania. Both global and Tanzanian chameleon exports declined across the study period, driven by decreased trade in generalist genera. Whilst the proportion of captive-bred individuals increased across time for the generalist taxa, the majority of range-restricted taxa in trade remained largely wild-sourced. For Tanzanian exports, 41% of chameleons were from one of the 23 endemic species, and 10 of the 12 Tanzanian endemic species in trade are categorised as threatened with extinction by IUCN. In terms of online trade, of the 42 Tanzanian species assessed, there was evidence of online sale for 83.3% species, and 69% were actively for sale with prices listed. Prices were on average highest for Trioceros species, followed by Kinyongia, Rieppeleon, Rhampholeon, and Chameleo. Field work in Tanzania provided evidence that the historic harvest of endemic chameleon species has been higher than the quantities of these species reported as exported by Tanzania in their annual trade reports to CITES. However, we found no field evidence for trade in 2020 and 2021, in line with Tanzanian regulations that applied a blanket ban on all exports of live wild animals. Literature evidence, however, suggests that illegal trade continued to Europe from seizures of Tanzanian chameleon species in Austria in 2021.

Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change.

Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here, we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conservation effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analyses reveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are currently distributed in PAs, and that this proportion will remain unaltered under future climate change. Indeed, loss of species' distributional ranges will be lower inside PAs than outside them. Therefore, the proportion of effectively protected species is predicted to increase. However, over 7.8% of species currently occur outside PAs, and large spatial conservation gaps remain, mainly across tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, and across non-high-income countries. We also predict that more than 300 amphibian and 500 reptile species may go extinct under climate change over the course of the ongoing century. Our study highlights the importance of PAs in providing herpetofauna with refuge from climate change, and suggests ways to optimize PAs to better conserve biodiversity worldwide.

Cryptic diversity and non-adaptive radiation of montane New Guinea skinks (Papuascincus; Scincidae).

New Guinea, the world's largest and highest tropical island, has a rich but poorly known biota. Papuascincus is a genus of skinks endemic to New Guinea's mountain regions, comprising two wide-ranging species and two species known only from their type series. The phylogeny of the genus has never been examined and the relationships among its species - as well as between it and closely related taxa - are hitherto unknown. We performed the first large-scale molecular-phylogenetic study of Papuascincus, including sampling across the genus' range in Papua New Guinea. We sequenced three mitochondrial and two nuclear markers from 65 specimens of Papuascincus and reconstructed their phylogenetic relationships. We also performed species-delimitation analyses, estimated divergence times and ancestral biogeography, and examined body-size evolution within the genus. Papuascincus was strongly supported as monophyletic. It began radiating during the mid-Miocene in the area now comprising the Central Cordillera of New Guinea, then dispersed eastward colonising the Papuan Peninsula. We found evidence of extensive cryptic diversity within the genus, with between nine and 20 supported genetic lineages. These were estimated using three methods of species delimitation and predominantly occur in allopatry. Distribution and body-size divergence patterns indicated that character displacement in size took place during the evolutionary history of Papuascincus. We conclude that the genus requires comprehensive taxonomic revision and likely represents a species-rich lineage of montane skinks.

Early insularity and subsequent mountain uplift were complementary drivers of diversification in a Melanesian lizard radiation (Gekkonidae: Cyrtodactylus).

Regions with complex geological histories present a major challenge for scientists studying the processes that have shaped their biotas. The history of the vast and biologically rich tropical island of New Guinea is particularly complex and poorly resolved. Competing geological models propose New Guinea emerged as a substantial landmass either during the Mid-Miocene or as recently as the Pliocene. Likewise, the estimated timing for the uplift of the high Central Cordillera, spanning the length of the island, differs across models. Here we investigate how early islands and mountain uplift have shaped the diversification and biogeography of Cyrtodactylus geckos. Our data strongly support initial colonisation and divergence within proto-Papuan islands in the Early- to Mid-Miocene, with divergent lineages and endemic diversity concentrated on oceanic island arcs in northern New Guinea and the formerly isolated East-Papuan Composite Terrane. At least four lineages are inferred to have independently colonised hill- and lower-montane forests, indicating that mountain uplift has also played a critical role in accumulating diversity, even in this predominantly lowland lineage. Our findings suggest that substantial land in northern New Guinea and lower-montane habitats date back well into the Miocene and that insular diversification and mountain colonisation have synergistically generated diversity in the geologically complex Papuan region.

The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation.

The distributions of amphibians, birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities, and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity. In contrast, the global distributions of reptiles, representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, have been unavailable. This prevented the incorporation of reptiles into conservation planning and biased our understanding of the underlying processes governing global vertebrate biodiversity. Here, we present and analyse the global distribution of 10,064 reptile species (99% of extant terrestrial species). We show that richness patterns of the other three tetrapod classes are good spatial surrogates for species richness of all reptiles combined and of snakes, but characterize diversity patterns of lizards and turtles poorly. Hotspots of total and endemic lizard richness overlap very little with those of other taxa. Moreover, existing protected areas, sites of biodiversity significance and global conservation schemes represent birds and mammals better than reptiles. We show that additional conservation actions are needed to effectively protect reptiles, particularly lizards and turtles. Adding reptile knowledge to a global complementarity conservation priority scheme identifies many locations that consequently become important. Notably, investing resources in some of the world's arid, grassland and savannah habitats might be necessary to represent all terrestrial vertebrates efficiently.

Publisher Correction: The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation.

In this Article originally published, owing to a technical error, the author 'Laurent Chirio' was mistakenly designated as a corresponding author in the HTML version, the PDF was correct. This error has now been corrected in the HTML version. Further, in Supplementary Table 3, the authors misspelt the surname of 'Danny Meirte'; this file has now been replaced.