Hotspots of amphibians in Iran; effectiveness of current protected area and priorities for conservation planning

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3205157/v1

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Hotspots of amphibians in Iran; effectiveness of current protected area and priorities for conservation planning

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3205157/v1

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To identify the national hotspots for amphibians based on their richness and rarity and assess the effectiveness of the current protected areas for their conservation, we curated 1700 species occurrence points for 22 amphibians, including 16 species of Anura and 6 species of Caudata. We used these occurrence points along with bioclimatic, anthropogenic, and geographical variables to model the distribution of species. We then calculated richness and rarity maps of amphibians and identified the hotspots based on the top 10% of areas with the highest richness and rarity values. Finally, we overlaid the protected areas to evaluate the current coverage of hotspots and identify future conservation priorities. Although approximately 12% of the country is currently protected, our findings indicate that the current network of protected areas is considerably ineffective for the conservation of amphibians; over 90% of hotspots for amphibians lie outside the current national protected area network. The most important hotspots are located in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest, the western margin of the North Zagros, and the Central Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe ecoregions of the country. Among different types of protected areas that overlap with amphibian hotspots, protected areas, and wildlife refuges, respectively, ranked the highest in terms of quantity and size, while national parks ranked the lowest. In this study, we provided a baseline of top candidate areas for expanding protected areas where habitats can be managed to protect amphibians in Iran. To further improve the coverage of protected areas, we suggested priorities in Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe hotspots.

Anura

Caudata

range-rarity

spatial conservation

species distribution models

Zagros Mountains

Identifying and establishing protected areas is one of the best-known methods to reduce threats and protect and limit biodiversity loss (Lewis 1996; Rodrigues, Andelman, et al. 2004; Moilanen 2007; Shaw et al. 2014). The progress in expanding the protected area network is displayed by the growth in the overall area designated (Watson et al. 2016; Coad et al. 2019) and not by the amount of biodiversity covered. It is more important to protect appropriate areas rather than to have just a large proportion of land protected (Pimm et al. 2018). Identifying the priority expansion areas is essential to maximize conservation outcomes (Montesino Pouzols et al. 2014) and protect species. In recent decades, a growing number of publications have focused on assessing the adequacy of currently protected area networks and conservation prioritization to expand the protected areas at national and global levels (Rodrigues, Akcakaya et al. 2004; Buhlmann et al. 2009; Chen et al. 2017; Sinclair et al. 2018; Lehtomäki et al. 2019; Linke et al. 2019). However, there is little information about how well this network achieves one of its main goals, protecting species diversity (Rodrigues, Akcakaya, et al. 2004; Coad et al. 2019) specifically in the Middle East.

Iran is about 164.8 Million ha, and approximately 12% of the country is protected for conservation purposes by the Department of the Environment of Iran (DOE), including 175 national protected areas, 31 national parks, 40 national natural monuments and 49 wildlife refuge (DOE-GIS 2020). Furthermore, there are 131 designated no hunting areas by DOE to safeguard natural resources and biodiversity. A higher protection levels for no hunting areas are envisaged, and these areas can potentially upgrade to protected area or wildlife refuges after 3 to 5 years. The current protected area network is not representative of the whole ecosystems and biological diversity of the national territory. The Iranian protected area network is far from complete, and it has been selected non-systematically (Madjnoonian 2000, 2020(. The existing network does not represent suitable habitats, distribution range, and richness and rarity of all taxonomic groups or even their representatives especially small-size and range-restricted species, particularly amphibians and reptiles. Over the past decades, mainly habitats of large terrestrial mammal species have been used to identify and select the most protected areas and thus other vertebrates and invertebrates were not sufficiently considered and protected. Therefore, additional protected areas using a systematic conservation planning approach are urgently needed (Madjnoonian 2000; Zehzad et al. 2002) to improve the effectiveness, performance and ensure long term conservation of the rich and unique species, habitat, and ecosystem diversity of the country.

Although Iran is located in the arid zone and the diversity of amphibians is lower than other vertebrate groups of terrestrial and inland water vertebrates of Iran, this group represents the highest number of (sub-) endemics of vertebrates in the country. Nine of the 22 amphibians are (sub-) endemic (40.1%), 93 of the 259 reptile species are (sub-) endemic (35%), 79 of the 264 freshwater fish species are endemic (29.9%), 16 of the 192 terrestrial mammals are (sub-) endemic (4.1%), and 3 of the 556 birds are (sub-) endemic (0.05%) (Yusefi et al. 2019; Safaei-Mahroo and Ghaffari 2020; Jouladeh-Roudbar et al. 2020).

To date, the effectiveness of the national protected area network has not been extensively investigated, and relatively little research has been carried out on identifying high conservation priority areas based on well-studied groups, namely mammals and birds (Mehri et al. 2014; Mehri et al. 2017; Esfandeh and Kaboli 2019), and even less on amphibians and reptiles. Besides, the majority of previous studies in Iran have been restricted to small geographic regions, mostly a province within the country.

As over 40 percent of amphibians are already at risk of extinction, various conservation strategies are vital for protecting them (Primack 2014; Bolochio et al. 2020). Although amphibians are the largest proportion of endangered species of all vertebrates (Hoffmann et al. 2010; Pereira et al. 2012; Barata et al. 2016; Nori et al. 2018), they are worldwide the least-represented group within protected area networks (Barata et al. 2016; Nori et al. 2015; Rodrigues, Andelman, et al. 2004). Up to now, far too little attention has been paid to identifying national high-priority areas based on amphibians in Iran. It is probably due to the lack of detailed species locality records. The availability of sufficient and reliable data is the key to effective conservation planning (Yang et al. 2016). The key question in effective conservation planning is where to be protected to maintain maximum biodiversity (Reid 1998; Safi et al. 2013; Jung et al. 2021). Establishing a national baseline for managing habitats to protect amphibians should be a priority to ensure the species’ survival. In this study, we aim to assess the effectiveness of the current network of protected areas for amphibians, and identify national hotspots for amphibians based on their richness and rarity.

Species occurrence data

A total of 1717 occurrence points were gathered from field surveys between 2002 and 2022 and also compiled from 505 literature containing papers, books, and dissertations from 1774 to 2022 for the 22 amphibians including 16 Anuran species and 6 species of Caudata. The existing specimens of 42 natural history museums as well as the data collected by the authors’ field trips and the national database, provided by Safaei-Mehroo and Ghaffari (2020), were also included in the final database. This has given rise to the formation of the most comprehensive database of amphibians’ distribution records in Iran so far.

The repetitive records of species were removed from the final data set, and the localities about which there were doubts in terms of the distribution of the species were checked, modified, or excluded from the data set. The Firouzophrynus stomaticus with three uncertain points of occurrence and the Neuregus crocatus with only a single point in Iran, were excluded from the analysis.

Environmental explanatory variables

We used a set of bioclimatic, anthropogenic, and geographic variables as the predictors to in our species distribution models. We obtained the 19 bioclimatic variables for the current climate from CHELSA version 2.1 (Karger et al. 2017), the land-cover layer of 2015 from ESA CCI time-series version 2.0.7 (ESA 2017). Euclidean distance to water bodies was also calculated from ESA CCI Water Bodies Map version 4.0 (Lamarche et al. 2017) and along with the latitudinal gradient added to the training variables.

We obtained the most recent underlying spatial data for Iran’s protected areas directly from the Department of Environment of Iran (DOE-GIS 2020). We performed all the geospatial analyses in R version 4.2.2 (R Core Team 2022), using raster version 3.6–11 (Hijmans 2022), rdgal version 1.6-3 (Bivand et al. 2022), and dismo 1.3-9 (Hijmans et al. 2022).

Species distribution models

To estimate the relationship between species occurrences and their habitat characteristics, we employed the maximum entropy species distribution model (Phillips et al. 2006) using dismo package. We trained the models through 50 iterations of random sampling from the species occurrence points, and the environmental explanatory variables. In each iteration, the occurrences were split; 50% of which were used to train the models and the remaining 50% of which were used to evaluate the performance of the models. We keep the parameters of the MaxEnt as default, except the regularization multiplier were set to 2 in favor of increased- fit to the current presence occurrences.

We evaluated the performance of the distribution models with their discrimination power. The discrimination power of a model is its ability to recognize a distinction between ‘presence’ versus ‘absence’ (Hosmer and Lemeshow 2000). The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plot was computed to assess the discrimination power of the models for each data set. A ROC curve plots sensitivity values (i.e. a true positive fraction) on the y-axis against 1 − specificity values (i.e. a false positive fraction) for all the thresholds on the x‐axis. Sensitivity is the probability that the model correctly predicts an observation while, specificity is the probability that a known absence site is correctly predicted. The plot in ROC space of sensitivity versus specificity displays how well an algorithm classifies instances as the threshold changes. The AUC is a single measure of a model’s discrimination power, which provides a threshold‐independent measure across all the possible classification thresholds for each model (Fielding and Bell 1997).

Identification of hotspots; richness and rarity

We summed the standardized (i.e. stretched linearly between 0 and 1) of the modelled distribution maps to calculate the richness of species potentially occurring in each cell. We converted modelled distribution maps into binary maps using the maximum sensitivity plus specificity values for each species. The range-size rarity (hereafter rarity) is calculated from the area of the pixel divided by the area of the range for each species, i.e. the proportion of the species’ range contained within the given pixel. These values are summed across all species to indicate the aggregate importance of each pixel to the species occurring there.

To identify the hotspots, we first weighted the species based on the four criteria of the IUCN Red List conservation status (Critically Endangered = 1; Endangered = 0.9; Vulnerable = 0.8; Near Threatened = 0.5), CITES Appendices (Appendix I = 1; Appendix II = 0.8; Appendix III = 0.6) and threats besides being endemic. We considered a species endemic if over 75% of its global distribution range occurs in Iran. Then calculated the weighted richness and rarity amps and extracted to the top 10% area of the country with the highest richness and rarity values. A pixel occurring in both the top 10% area with the highest richness and the top 10% area with the highest rarity values considered the priority 1, and a pixel occurring in the top 10% area with the highest richness or the top 10% area with the highest rarity values considered the priority 2.

Performance of the species distribution models and the contribution of explanatory environmental variables

The distribution models for all species demonstrated high performances in discriminating suitable habitats of the species in Iran. The AUC of all species were over 0.88 with an average of 0.96, ranging from 0.87 to 0.99. The highest AUC value for Salamandra infraimmaculata and the lowest for Bufotes sitibundus (Appendix A). The precipitation of the driest month was the most important variable, contributing significantly to the models for the majority of species; 34% in the models for salamanders and newts, 30% for frogs, and 12% for toads. Among other environmental variables, land cover was the second most important predictor, which contributed 12% in the models for frogs, 12% for toads, and 4.5% for salamanders and newts.

Distribution patterns of species richness, rarity and endemism

As expected, given different environmental conditions, water availability and temperature (Buckley and Jetz 2007), modelled amphibian richness is not uniformly distributed across the country. Most of the highest potential amphibian species richness regions occur in the Zagros Mountains forest-steppe in western Iran (the western margin of the North Zagros, bordering Iraq and Turkey, located in the Tigris Basin from 1100 to 2200 m elevation and central Zagros between altitudes of 600 to 1700 m in Karun catchment) containing ten species, and Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forests (the southern coast of the Caspian Sea to the northern parts of the Alborz and Talish mountains heights from − 26 to 1200 m), containing nine species. More than 85 percent of amphibians in Iran are found in these two areas. As part of the oriental biogeographic realm, the south-eastern country ranks third among the amphibian species richness regions and is the habitat of six species. The distribution of amphibian richness and rarity indexes across different provinces is shown in Fig. 1.

Northwestern and southwestern parts of the Zagros Mountains forest in Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azarbaijan, and Khuzestan, along with Hyrcanian Mixed Forests highlands in Gilan, Mazandaran, and Golestan provinces, represent the most parts of endemic and rare species distribution in the country (8 species). One-third of Iran lies in the Central Persian Desert Basins and contains comparatively the lowest amphibian species diversity. Kuh Rud and Eastern Iran montane woodlands are located inside this arid region as isolated mountains. These areas are the only suitable amphibian habitats in the Central Persian Desert Basin due to the humidity compared to the dry zone, particularly for green toads (Bufotes sp.).

Identification of amphibian species hotspots

Our results highlighted hotspots located in only 11 of the 31 provinces of the country, mainly in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest, the western margin of the North Zagros, and the Central Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe, covering 6904666 ha of Iran’s terrestrial area (Fig. 2). The Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest hotspot covers 422259 ha and reaches four provinces, including Mazandaran Province (290043ha), Gilan Province (84462 ha), Golestan Province (38952 ha), and Semnan Province (8802 ha). The Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe hotspots cover 226757 ha and reach seven provinces, including Kurdistan (70251 ha), West Azarbaijan (67506 ha), Khuzestan (33836 ha), Ilam (28515 ha), Kermanshah (25609 ha), Charmahal va Bakhtyari (147.9 ha), and Lorestan (892 ha). The Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest hotspot is an integrated region. In comparison, due to the high mountains areas such as Oshtorankooh and Bistoon cause the temperature difference and rainfall pattern between the North Zagros and Central Zagros, areas with amphibian protection priority in the Zagros Mountains forest-steppe contain two separated spots (Fig. 3).

Coverage of existing protected areas

We estimated that only 0.39 percent of the country’s total area is currently protected within amphibian hotspots. The results indicate the inefficiency of existing protected areas in representing amphibians’ richness and rarity. The overlap between hotspots and the protected area network is relatively small, amphibian species hotspots are poorly protected and more than 90% of amphibians’ most important priority areas lie outside the current national protected area network (Appendix B).

Among the 295 protected areas in Iran (6904666 ha); including 31 national parks, 175 protected areas, 40 national natural monuments, and 49 wildlife refuges – only 68 areas overlap with amphibian hotspots. These include six national parks across five provinces (68706 ha), 41 protected areas across 13 provinces (526649 ha), 14 wildlife refuges in five provinces (59476 ha), and seven national natural monuments throughout six provinces (734 ha) (Appendix C). We identified the top existing protected areas with the greatest amphibian hotspot coverage (Table 1). Coverage of all protected areas by amphibian hotspots is listed in Appendix D. Among areas that overlap amphibian species hotspots, protected areas and wildlife refuges, respectively, rank highest in terms of quantity and size, and national parks rank lowest. Due to their size, most national natural monuments overlap 100 percent with hotspots.

Table 1

The top 10 national protected areas with the highest amphibian hotspot coverage.
Protected Area	Province	Species richness	Species rarity	Coverage of hotspots & PAs (ha)
Northern - Central Alborz P.A.	Mazandaran	0.45	0.54	180247
Kousalan & Shahou P.A.	Kurdistan	1.00	1.00	60015
Gasht Rudkhan P.A.	Gilan	0.93	0.93	36713
Jahan Nama P.A.	Golestan	0.96	0.96	32101
Bouzin Marekhil P.A.	Kermanshah	0.87	1.00	21886
Sarvelat & Javaher dasht P.A.	Gilan	0.91	0.91	19273
Mirabad P.A.	West Azarbaijan	1.00	1.00	11435
Siah-keshim P.A.	Gilan	1.00	1.00	4498
Asas P.A.	Mazandaran	1.00	1.00	4314
Khibous & Anjil-si P.A.	Mazandaran	1.00	1.00	4000

Biodiversity has been threatened for a long time by habitat loss (Brooks et al. 2002; Hanski 2005; Groom et al. 2006; Hanski 2011; Hulton VanTassel et al. 2017), and this remains a problem today. Protected areas are essential for conserving biodiversity (Rodrigues, Andelman et al. 2004). In order to effectively address the current biodiversity crisis, shifting focus from quantity to quality of protected area network expansion is necessary (Coad et al. 2019). Amphibians are primarily threatened by habitat destruction and degradation worldwide (Gibbons et al. 2000; Cushman 2006; Conan et al. 2021) and in Iran (Safaei-Mahroo and Ghaffari 2020). It is not possible to conserve species if suitable habitats are not identified and protected adequately. As a result, identifying and safeguarding suitable habitats of species, particularly endangered ones, should be a national priority.

The results of our study provided a national baseline for where habitats can be managed to protect amphibians. Despite the coverage of 11.6% of the country’s area as the current protected area network, our results revealed a considerable inefficiency in the existing protected areas in protecting amphibians, and 90.60% of the most important priority areas for amphibians lie outside the current national protected area network. Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest occupies 3.4% of the country’s area, and we found the entire region is an integrated amphibian hotspot. 6.1% of the existing protected area network associated with amphibian hotspots is located in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest. Thus, we assume the amphibian hotspot coverage of this region’s current protected area network is adequate. Compared to other parts of the country, this region is not in immediate need of expanding protected areas for protecting amphibians. The Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe covers 21.8% of the country’s area and contains 3.2% of its amphibian hotspots. We recommend that expanding protected area networks in this region should be a high priority to safeguard amphibian species and their habitats. Iranian national laws provide the highest level of protection for national parks among the protected areas network (Madjnoonian 2020); based on this aspect, national parks provide better protection for wildlife and their habitats compared with other protected areas. The total area of existing national parks in Iran is 20682424 ha. Over 85% of the country’s national park area (17933030 ha) lies within arid and semi-arid zones where most amphibians cannot survive. It is worth noting that the main newts and salamanders’ suitable habitats are outside the current Iranian national parks. We identified only four national parks as hotspots for amphibian species across the country. 55% of the area of Paband National Park (15244 ha) is the hotspot of amphibian species. This national park is located in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forests and is the habitat of Bufo eichwaldi, Bufotes sitibundus, Hyla orientalis, Rana pseudodalmatina, Pelophylax persicus. 39% of the Boujagh National Park (1356 ha) is the hotspot of amphibian species. Boujagh National Park is a shallow bay of the Caspian Sea and the delta wetlands at the mouth of the Sefid Rud River and designated as a Ramsar Site, an international importance wetland (Ramsar Information Sheet 2022), the habitat for anurans. The marine regions of this national park are unsuitable for amphibians, while its sandy shoreline is the habitat for the only Iranian spadefoot toad, Pelobates syriacus. 10% of Urmia National Park’s area (54131 ha) is an amphibian hotspot. Urmia National Park, a large hypersaline lake with a unique ecosystem, is located in northwest Iran (Schulz et al. 2020). Saline water makes it impossible for amphibians to survive, and its only suitable habitat for anurans is the freshwater rivers on the lake’s margin. 1.7% of Arasbaran National Park (152 ha), part of the Caucasus biodiversity hotspot, is the hotspot of amphibian species and includes portions of the range for Bufotes sitibundus, Hyla savignyi, Rana macrocnemis, Pelophylax bedriagae.

Among conservation areas in Iran, the highest number and coverage (526649 ha) belongs to protected areas. We identified 41 protected areas out of 175 that are amphibian hotspots.

The coverage of current protected areas situated in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest adequately supports amphibian hotspots in the north of Iran. There are five protected areas of great importance for amphibian conservation within Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe: Mir-Abad Protected Area, Tang-e Haft Protected Area, Kousalan & Shahou Protected Area, Chelpa Protected Area, and Shimbar Protected Area.

We identified 14 wildlife refuges covering amphibian species hotspots. Except for Zarivar Wildlife Refuge, all other wildlife refuges are located within the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest. National natural monuments are the smallest protected areas in Iran, ranging in size from 0.01 to 7694 ha. We identified seven national natural monuments covering amphibian species hotspots in the country, varying from 17 to 254 ha and occupying a total area of 734 ha. It is important to include small reserves in conservation planning (Volenec and Dobson 2020), Shevi Waterfall National Natural Monument (45 ha) supports five amphibian species, including Bufotes sitibundus, Calliopersa luristanica, Hyla savignyi, Pelophylax bedriagae, and Neurergus kaiseri. Qouri Qaleh Cave National Natural Monument (17 ha) is the habitat of four species, including B. v. sitibundus, H. savignyi, P. bedriagae, and N. derjugini. These habitats have considerable conservation value despite their small size. The costs of managing national natural monuments as fragmented habitat patches are lower than those of other protected areas in the country. However, they are more vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic threats and, because of their small size, are more likely to lose species (Joppa et al. 2008).

Conservation implications

Conservation planning and identifying priority areas can be challenging when few data are available (Brito et al. 2008). Before this study, the lack of detailed amphibian species distribution in Iran was one of the obstacles to identifying the new protected areas to safeguard amphibians’ survival. In this study, we provided an updated view on the accurate occurrence of amphibians and highlighted hotspots in Iran that can be used as a baseline for decision-makers, particularly the department of environment for amphibian conservation planning. The relative distribution of amphibian hotspots throughout provinces is shown in a treemap (Fig. 4). National biodiversity strategies and action plans are tools for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity’s objectives (CBD 1992). According to the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan, 20% of Iran’s land should be protected by 2030 (NBSAPs 2016). Our study identified top candidate areas where habitats can be managed to protect amphibians in Iran. We detected hotspots in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest, the western edge of North Zagros, and the Central Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe. To improve protected area coverage for amphibians, we suggest that new protected areas should be first established in the Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe hotspots. To strengthen the level of protection, we propose that existing no hunting areas with the greatest coverage of amphibian hotspots be designated as protected areas or wildlife refuges (Table 2). We identified the top priority counties for amphibian conservation in Iran. Thus, new protected areas can be established within these priority counties (Table 3).

Table 2

Top 10 national no hunting areas with greatest amphibian hotspot coverage. These areas are highly recommended to be upgraded to higher level of protection. The listed areas are sorted by the Province and are not ranked based on any priority.
Protected Area	Province	Hot spot	Location in Iran
Haft-Tanan No-Hunting Area	Khuzestan	Central Zagros Mountains	Western part
Ghaleh Shadab No-Hunting Area	Khuzestan	Central Zagros Mountains
Shoo va Landar No-Hunting Area	Khuzestan	Central Zagros Mountains
Ghali-Kuh No-Hunting Area	Lorestan	Central Zagros Mountains
Nishak No-Hunting Area	Golestan	Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest	Northern part
Deilaman Dorfak No-Hunting Area	Gilan	Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest
Lafor No-Hunting Area	Mazandaran	Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest
Mazibon No-Hunting Area	Mazandaran	Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest
Do-Hezar No-Hunting Area	Mazandaran	Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest
Paband No-Hunting Area	Mazandaran	Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest

Table 3

Top 10 counties with highest priority for amphibian conservation
County	Province	Hot spot	Location in Iran
Mahabad	West Azarbaijan	North Zagros Mountains	Southwestern Part
Sardasht	Kurdistan	North Zagros Mountains	Southwestern Part
Baneh	Kurdistan	North Zagros Mountains	Southwestern Part
Saqez	Kurdistan	North Zagros Mountains	Western Part
Marivan	Kurdistan	North Zagros Mountains	Western Part
Javan-roud	Kermanshah	North Zagros Mountains	Western Part
Ravansar	Kermanshah	North Zagros Mountains	Western Part
Khoram-Abad	Lorestan	Central Zagros Mountains	Southern Part
Andimeshk	Khuzestan	Central Zagros Mountains	Northern Part
Lali	Khuzestan	Central Zagros Mountains	Northern Part

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design methodology. Barbod Safaei-Mahroo collected occurrence data. Aidin Niamir analyzed the data. Hanyeh Ghaffari and Barbod Safaei-Mahroo wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All other authors provided comments on the draft and approved the final manuscript.

Data Availability Statement

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Office of Wildlife Management and Conservation of the Department of Environment of Iran for providing the spatial data underlying the national network of protected areas. We also appreciate the assistance of Alireza Naderi and Mahtab Pir Bavaghar.

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Hotspots of amphibians in Iran; effectiveness of current protected area and priorities for conservation planning

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Abstract

Figures

Introduction

Methods

Species occurrence data

Environmental explanatory variables

Species distribution models

Identification of hotspots; richness and rarity

Results

Performance of the species distribution models and the contribution of explanatory environmental variables

Distribution patterns of species richness, rarity and endemism

Identification of amphibian species hotspots

Coverage of existing protected areas

Discussion

Conservation implications

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

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