Distribution and status of reptile species in south-eastern Zimbabwe

Abstract

While the loss of biodiversity in response to anthropogenic drivers is well documented, reptiles are rarely prioritised in global conservation efforts. Although more than 20% of all reptile species are currently listed as threatened, and a growing body of evidence highlights the sensitivity of reptiles to habitat change, basic information on the distribution, natural history, and regional conservation status of African reptiles remains sparse. Habitat loss through agricultural land-use change is regarded as the primary threat to global biodiversity and to southern African reptiles in particular. Arid and semi-arid ecoregions in southern Africa have been identified as areas of global conservation priority for reptiles. However, the status of Zimbabwe’s reptiles remains largely unknown. Limited resources and more urgent concerns have hampered what Zimbabwe has been able to achieve with respect to international conservation initiatives. Furthermore, the ecological impacts of recent, wide-scale land-use change in the country have received little attention. As legacies of historical land-use change are acknowledged as determinants of current landscape ecology, addressing the long-term effects of land-use change on Zimbabwe’s reptiles is crucial for effective conservation and management. Here we provide a complete account of the reptile taxa recorded in south-eastern Zimbabwe. We discuss sources of spatial and temporal bias in the occurrence dataset and highlight the importance of the region’s protected area network for conserving reptile diversity. Our study increases the number of published reptile occurrence records from the region by an estimated 285%.