The assessment of species distribution is a first critical phase of biodiversity studies and is necessary to many disciplines such as biogeography, conservation biology and ecology. However, several species are difficult to detect, especially during particular time periods or developmental stages, potentially biasing study outcomes. Here we present a novel approach, based on the limited persistence of DNA in the environment, to detect the presence of a species in fresh water. We used specific primers that amplify short mitochondrial DNA sequences to track the presence of a frog ( Rana catesbeiana ) in controlled environments and natural wetlands. A multi-sampling approach allowed for species detection in all environments where it was present, even at low densities. The reliability of the results was demonstrated by the identification of amplified DNA fragments, using traditional sequencing and parallel pyrosequencing techniques. As the environment can retain the molecular imprint of inhabiting species, our approach allows the reliable detection of secretive organisms in wetlands without direct observation. Combined with massive sequencing and the development of DNA barcodes that enable species identification, this approach opens new perspectives for the assessment of current biodiversity from environmental samples.

DNA barcoding is a key tool for assessing biodiversity in both taxonomic and environmental studies. Essential features of barcodes include their applicability to a wide spectrum of taxa and their ability to identify even closely related species. Several DNA regions have been proposed as barcodes and the region selected strongly influences the output of a study. However, formal comparisons between barcodes remained limited until now. Here we present a standard method for evaluating barcode quality, based on the use of a new bioinformatic tool that performs in silico PCR over large databases. We illustrate this approach by comparing the taxonomic coverage and the resolution of several DNA regions already proposed for the barcoding of vertebrates. To assess the relationship between in silico and in vitro PCR, we also developed specific primers amplifying different species of Felidae, and we tested them using both kinds of PCR

Governments have committed to conserving ≥17% of terrestrial and ≥10% of marine environments globally, especially “areas of particular importance for biodiversity” through “ecologically representative” Protected Area (PA) systems or other “area‐based conservation measures”, while individual countries have committed to conserve 3–50% of their land area. We estimate that PAs currently cover 14.6% of terrestrial and 2.8% of marine extent, but 59–68% of ecoregions, 77–78% of important sites for biodiversity, and 57% of 25,380 species have inadequate coverage. The existing 19.7 million km² terrestrial PA network needs only 3.3 million km² to be added to achieve 17% terrestrial coverage. However, it would require nearly doubling to achieve, cost‐efficiently, coverage targets for all countries, ecoregions, important sites, and species. Poorer countries have the largest relative shortfalls. Such extensive and rapid expansion of formal PAs is unlikely to be achievable. Greater focus is therefore needed on alternative approaches, including community‐ and privately managed sites and other effective area‐based conservation measures.

A precise knowledge of the spatial distribution of taxa is essential for decision-making processes in land management and biodiversity conservation, both for present and under future global change scenarios. This is a key base for several scientific disciplines (e.g. macro-ecology, biogeography, evolutionary biology, spatial planning, or environmental impact assessment) that rely on species distribution maps. An atlas summarizing the distribution of European amphibians and reptiles with 50 × 50 km resolution maps based on ca. 85 000 grid records was published by the Societas Europaea Herpetologica (SEH) in 1997. Since then, more detailed species distribution maps covering large parts of Europe became available, while taxonomic progress has led to a plethora of taxonomic changes including new species descriptions. To account for these progresses, we compiled information from different data sources: published in books and websites, ongoing national atlases, personal data kindly provided to the SEH, the 1997 European Atlas, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Databases were homogenised, deleting all information except species names and coordinates, projected to the same coordinate system (WGS84) and transformed into a 50 × 50 km grid. The newly compiled database comprises more than 384 000 grid and locality records distributed across 40 countries. We calculated species richness maps as well as maps of Corrected Weighted Endemism and defined species distribution types (i.e. groups of species with similar distribution patterns) by hierarchical cluster analysis using Jaccard’s index as association measure. Our analysis serves as a preliminary step towards an interactive, dynamic and online distributed database system (NA2RE system) of the current spatial distribution of European amphibians and reptiles. The NA2RE system will serve as well to monitor potential temporal changes in their distributions. Grid maps of all species are made available along with this paper as a tool for decision-making and conservation-related studies and actions. We also identify taxonomic and geographic gaps of knowledge that need to be filled, and we highlight the need to add temporal and altitudinal data for all records, to allow tracking potential species distribution changes as well as detailed modelling of the impacts of land use and climate change on European amphibians and reptiles.