Distribution, diversity and conservation status of Bolivian Reptiles

Abstract

<p>The study area was defined as being the whole country of Bolivia. The Conservation Status of Bolivian Reptiles has been poorly investigated. Very few species had been assessed by the IUCN and very few were listed in CITES. As Bolivia still is within the countries with best conserved habitat, now is the moment to plan the conservation of its Biodiversity. This makes the present study urgent and necessary. <br /> To be able to identify the conservation status of the reptiles of Bolivia first the species had to be identified correctly, a complete list of reptiles in Bolivia, and a most complete possible database had to be elaborated including geo-referenced data. On base of the obtained information distribution of the species had been extrapolated with the Distribution Model BIOM (Sommer et. al 2002). Later on the maps were overlaid to get different maps as species richness and endemism richness.<br /> A new methodology for the evaluation of the Conservation status of Bolivian Reptiles was elaborated for this work. The reason for this is that there has been information which was considered by the author as essential but which are not included in the IUCN methodology and some other information required by the IUCN methodology was difficult to obtain. <br /> A total of 269 reptile species were been evaluated for its conservation status. 211 of them are identified for the category “lower risk” (or Least Concern). This is 79% of the total species number evaluated. The results vary strongly within the different families. Boidae for example just showed one species worse than the category “Least Concern”. From the 14 Liolaemidae evaluated, just four resulted as “Least Concern”; all others from this family showed higher categories. 34 species were evaluated as “Nearly Threatened” (13 %), 9 species as “Vulnerable” (3 %), 6 as “Endangered” (2 %) and 9 species as “Critically Endangered” (3 %).<br /> 6379 datasets (264 caimans, 401 turtles, 2539 ophidians, 3175 lizards) were used to generate 268 (7 Boidae, 10 Elapidae, 4 Caimans, 14 turtles, 13 Vipers, 114 Colubrids, 5 Leptotyphlopids, 2 Typhlopids, 99 lizards) extrapolated distribution maps, this is a medium of 24 datasets per map. Additionally 266 fragmentation maps were generated and maps of species richness, endemism and others.<br /> For all species included in this work in addition the IUCN methodology (3.1 (2001)) was applied (see also discussion). In several cases the results varied from the results obtained by the methodology used and elaborated for this work. 255 species of the total 269 species have been evaluated as “Least Concern”, one as “Near Threatened”, three as “Vulnerable”, eight as “Endangered” and 4 as “Critically Endangered”. <br /> Also the official IUCN Conservation status has been listed for all species. 258 species has been found as “Not Evaluated”, seven as in “Lower risk” and four as “Vulnerable”. 23 species have been found to be listed in CITES II, one species in CITES I and one species in CITES III.<br /> Finally the obtained results were compared with two other similar studies and species richness and endemism patterns were identified. An outlook for the Conservation of Reptiles in Bolivia is given</p>