Data from: 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.