Hotspots of amphibians in Iran; effectiveness of current protected area and priorities for conservation planning

Abstract To identify the national hotspots for amphibians based on their richness and rarity and assess the effectiveness of the current protected areas for their conservation, we curated 1700 species occurrence points for 22 amphibians, including 16 species of Anura and 6 species of Caudata. We used these occurrence points along with bioclimatic, anthropogenic, and geographical variables to model the distribution of species. We then calculated richness and rarity maps of amphibians and identified the hotspots based on the top 10% of areas with the highest richness and rarity values. Finally, we overlaid the protected areas to evaluate the current coverage of hotspots and identify future conservation priorities. Although approximately 12% of the country is currently protected, our findings indicate that the current network of protected areas is considerably ineffective for the conservation of amphibians; over 90% of hotspots for amphibians lie outside the current national protected area network. The most important hotspots are located in the Caspian Hyrcanian Mixed Forest, the western margin of the North Zagros, and the Central Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe ecoregions of the country. Among different types of protected areas that overlap with amphibian hotspots, protected areas, and wildlife refuges, respectively, ranked the highest in terms of quantity and size, while national parks ranked the lowest. In this study, we provided a baseline of top candidate areas for expanding protected areas where habitats can be managed to protect amphibians in Iran. To further improve the coverage of protected areas, we suggested priorities in Zagros Mountains Forest-Steppe hotspots.