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March 2018, Volume 27, Issue 3, pp 567–582 | Cite as

The conservation status of African vertebrates is unrelated to environmental and spatial patterns in their geographic ranges



Statistical predictions of the impact of climate change on biodiversity assume that the environmental and spatial characteristics of contemporary species’ distributions reflect the conditions needed for their continued and prolonged existence. Here we explore this assumption by testing whether a species’ threatened status is associated with the amount of variation in its distribution range attributable to environmental and spatial patterns. Using a variation partitioning approach, we decomposed variation in the distribution ranges of 4423 vertebrate species in sub-Saharan Africa into components attributable exclusively to environmental variables (E|S), exclusively to spatial variables (S|E) or to the collinearity between environmental and spatial variables (E∩S). We found that species’ threatened status was unrelated to E|S, S|E or E∩S variation components, but that unexplained variation was higher for species threatened with extinction. This suggests that spatio-environmental patterns in species’ ranges likely underestimate the overall extinction threat caused by climate change. We also found clear geographic patterns in the strength of E|S, S|E or E∩S that differed amongst biogeographical regions, but no component was over- or underrepresented in the present-day protected area network. While there may be benefits to tailoring protected area expansion to differences between biogeographical regions, this should aim to incorporate species-specific information wherever possible.


Biogeography Extinction threat Protected areas Sub-Saharan Africa Variation partitioning

Communicated by Karen E. Hodges.


The online version of this article (doi: 10.1007/s10531-017-1449-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.



This work was supported by a EUROSA Erasmus Mundus action 2 PhD Scholarship. We would also like to thank Raquel Garcia and two anonymous referees for comments that improved this manuscript.


10531_2017_1449_MOESM1_ESM.docx (472 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 471 kb)







Buschke, F.T., Brendonck, L. & Vanschoenwinkel, B. Biodivers Conserv (2018) 27: 567. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1449-y



