Richness Patterns for Reptile Species of Southern Africa (1 km)

<div style='text-align:Left;font-size:12pt'><div><div><p><span>Biodiversity is critical for maintaining the function of ecosystems and their services to humans. Using different biodiversity measures can shed light on which areas should be prioritized for biodiversity conservation. Beyond the number of species occurring in an area, rare species that have small range extents should be prioritized in conservation planning, as the conservation opportunities are limited for these range-restricted species especially when comparing them to wide-ranging species. Patterns of species richness and range rarity provide insights about the biogeography of taxa and offer an initial basis for global biodiversity conservation efforts.</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span /></p><p><span>Species richness is the number of species ranges estimated to overlap in each cell. The data presented in this layer reflect the number of species occurring in each grid cell expressed as a raw value from low (dark blue) to high (yellow).</span></p><p><span /></p><p><span /></p><p><span>Species ranges were modeled at a 1-km resolution, integrating occurrence data and expert maps, where each distribution was predicted across Africa, and limited to the southern Africa extent. This extent represents the area for which there was complete spatial and taxonomic data coverage for this species group.</span></p></div></div></div>