Global_assessment_urban_ecology_reptiles.xlsx

Global urban expansion has multiple impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Still, urban centers may play an important role in the conservation of reptiles, an undersampled, megadiverse, and unevenly distributed group especially vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts. However, major gaps in research on urban ecology of reptiles and species responses to urbanisation persist, which may limit our capacity to guide suitable conservation policies. We conducted a global systematic literature review to evaluate biogeographic, taxonomic and ecological biases on urban ecology of reptiles, and ultimately to detect major gaps and steer future sampling efforts.
We used the Web of Science (WOS) to conduct an exhaustive search of scientific articles on urban ecology of reptiles published worldwide until December 2019. The search was conducted using the following keywords only in english “((herpet* OR rept* OR squamat* OR crocodile* OR snake* OR lizard* OR turtle*) AND (urban* OR cit* OR antrop*))”. This search resulted in a database of 1.258 publications that included both native and exotic species. Because our goal was to evaluate trends, biases and gaps in urban ecology of reptiles, we only selected studies that focused on ecological responses of wild reptile species in urban areas.
We exclusively incorporated reptiles to our database regardless whether
the study covered other taxonomic groups (e.g., birds, mammals). Review papers
and studies dealing on domestic (reptile pets) and/or commercial species (food
or medicinal focus), as well as those conducted only in agricultural and other
rural areas located outside suburban and urban environments were also excluded.
Studies on populations of domesticated species that have returned to feral
state after release or escape, were also included.After selection criteria, our database ultimately comprised the
following items: (1) year of the publication of the
study; (2) country(ies) where study was conducted; (3) geographic coordinates
and name (i.e., town, city) of the study location(s); (4) taxa involved in the
study (orders: Rhynchocephalia, Squamata, Testudines, and Crocodylia;
suborder only for Squamata: Lacertilia, Serpentes, and Amphisbaenia; and
species). We used the classification of taxonomic groups based on The Tree of
Life (http://tolweb.org/tree/; Maddison et al. 2007) and
species were checked following The Reptile Database (Uetz et al. 2020). Taxa identified only at the genus level were recorded
as Genus sp. (e.g., Podarcis, Podarcis sp., Podarcis
spp., Podarcis sp. 1, Podarcis sp. 2 were all included as Podarcis
sp.), whereas subspecies, varieties, forms, and species not fully identified
with a proper specific epithet were included under the corresponding binomial
species name (e.g., Podarcis muralis ssp. muralis, P. aff. muralis,
and P. cf. muralis were all
recorded as Podarcis muralis); (5) if the studied species
was native or exotic; and (6) research topic(s), used as indicators of
ecological bias, following Magle et al. (2012): animal behaviour (e.g. diet
preferences, dispersal, habitat selection, home range, mating behaviour),
community ecology (interactions between two or more species), conservation
(wildlife preservation and conservation status), human-reptile conflict
(situations where encounters of humans and wild reptiles end up causing damage
to some of the parties such as injuries, death, and/or economic loss),
landscape ecology (landscape-level processes such as connectivity, edge effect
or land cover use), population ecology (individual- and population-level
dynamics such as abundance, diversity, richness, and reproduction), wildlife
management (active wildlife management, which includes population control,
relocation, sharpshooting, and sterilization), and reptile health (studies that
address any health assessment as contaminations, parasite load and diseases, or
metabolism). Some studies reported data from multiple species, several
biological responses associated with the considered research topics, and
different countries and/or biomes. Each report within a study between a given
species and a specific research topic was termed a case, the unit of our
database. Some articles conducted international or intercontinental studies
including more than one biome, and species with wide distribution area and/or
introduced in other countries were occasionally studied in multiple biomes
(e.g., Podarcis muralis). Therefore, we included each report between a
given article and a specific biome and, within an article, between a particular
biome and a single species. Consequently, the total number of studies (n = 288)
does not correspond to the number of articles (n = 278) in our database and,
similarly, the number of studied species across biomes (n = 669) does not
correspond with the total number of species (n = 493) recorded in our database.