Key biodiversity areas (KBA) were developed to identify networks of globally important sites which can ensure the persistence of biodiversity in the upcoming years, as we are facing a global environmental crisis. These sites are selected according to standard criteria which evaluate and identify a conservation target.
Intraspecific genetic diversity is one of the aspects of diversity below the species level that can be used in the KBA approach. However, the use of genetic data to identify KBA has not been implemented yet, and remains an unexplored potential indicator. This is partly due to the lack of detailed guidelines and tested methods to apply this criteria, but it also depends on the genetic data availability of species, which not always allows to estimate genetic variability across a species range.
A detailed and complete data set of genetic sequences of nucelar and mitochondrial markers is available for most amphibians species in Italy. It was assembled over more than a decade of field sampling performed by expert herpetologists. It includes genetic information covering populations across the entire range for most species.
Here, we aim at detecting potential KBA of Italian amphibians through the implementation of a bayesian kriging algorithm. Population intraspecific diversity indexes can be used to interpolate a continuous spatial surface across a species range. The spatial surface is an estimate of the global intraspecific diversity distribution of the species. Finally, a grid of squared spatial units can be implemented to test the percentage of global genetic diversity of a species in a particular site. Sites which hold a percentage of global genetic diversity which exceeds a specified threshold can be identified as potential KBA for the species. The produced maps can be used as a reference for conservation planning and policy making. Further, it represents a first effort of genetic data implementation in a KBA approach.
Key Biodiversity areas represent a recently developed concept in conservation science, very little has been done so far, in terms of KBA identification. In particular, genetic data has never been implemented to detect KBA (Brooks 2015).
As guidelines for the possible implementation of this kind of data were published only in 2020 (IUCN 2020), they have not been tested yet. Moreover, the guidelines leave room to test different methods to implement genetic data. This lack of tested methods therefore needs new studies that attempt at evaluating and comparing different methods. Our study is one of the first attempts in this direction.
The availability of a detailed data set of genetic diversity distribution of all amphibians species across Italy represents a major opportunity to test how genetic data can help us identify new KBA. The results of this study can have an impact in conservation planning and policy making for the conservation of Italian herpetofauna.
Brooks TM et al.(2015) Why and how might genetic and phylogenetic diversity be reflected in the identification of key biodiversity areas? Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 370: 20140019
IUCN. (2020). A Global Standard for the Identification of Key Biodiversity Areas, Version 1.1