DOI: 10.5061/dryad.tdz08kq1d
title: Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta frog locality data

description: Climate change and habitat loss or fragmentation are two major threats to
 biodiversity. Montane amphibians are particularly sensitive to these
 threats. Colombia, a megadiverse country, is home to the world’s second
 largest number of amphibians. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), an
 isolated mountain range, houses 48 amphibian species of which 17 are
 endemic. We aimed to address climate vulnerability of the amphibian
 community in the SNSM and prioritize amphibian species at risk and
 conservation actions. We conducted three visual encounter surveys from,
 800 – 3,600 m, during September 2017 – July 2018. In order to assess
 species vulnerability, we completed two independent spatial analyses.
 First, we calculated the Area of Habitat of each species, defined as
 habitat available to a species. Area of Habitat was refined (from the
 original IUCN EOO maps) for the majority of amphibian species, averaging a
 reduction in available suitable habitat by 71%. We then examined the
 breadth of climatic space occupied by 16 species and how this space is
 predicted to shift under predicted climate scenarios (RCP scenarios 4.5
 and 8.5) for 2050. Our analysis reveals a large reduction in climatic
 space under both 2050 RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. We combined these two
 analyses with trait data related to adaptive capacity, obtained from
 previous research, to create a combined (correlative-trait) climate change
 vulnerability assessment (CCVA) for 19 focal species (16 endemic). Our
 vulnerability assessment identified eight high priority species, including
 all three Atelopus spp and five within the Pristimantis complex. Given its
 isolation, the SNSM and endemic species are particularly susceptible to
 changing climates. The information provided from the CCVA offers a
 platform to develop regional strategies for climate change adaptation and
 conservation.
description: Amphibian visual encounter surveys (Heyer et al. 1994) were
 conducted on the north-western slope of the SNSM, in the department of
 Magdalena (Fig. 1). Surveys were conducted at 35 transects across three
 elevational bands (Low: 800 – 1,200 m; Mid: 1,200 – 2,000 m; and High:
 2,000 – 3,700 m), and five land cover types. To assess current and future
 climate space of species within the SNSM, we used hypervolumes (Blonder et
 al. 2014) to quantify a coarse measure of species’ overlap with climatic
 space in the SNSM. We further determined how this overlap shifts under two
 climate scenarios. We used species occurrence data from GBIF
 (doi:10.15468/dl.ihs3es, doi:10.15468/dl.hcqkns) to supplement the records
 collected from our visual encounter surveys and generate a minimum of five
 observations for most of our species (Proosdij et al. 2016). We removed
 duplicate localities, those with georeferencing uncertainty above 1 km,
 samples outside of a species’ known elevation range, and samples with
 taxonomic uncertainty. We defined our geographic extent for analyses as
 the entire range of the SNSM, which would encompass all available habitats
 from sea level to 5,775 m with a one-degree buffer around the SNSM to
 include potential low elevation, non-montane climates.
description: Missing values are indicated by n/a.. Data are useful for
 subsequent development of ecological niche models or species distribution
 modeling.