Ricerc@Sapienza

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.