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Among reptiles, turtles are the most frequently traded species and often released in the wild once they become unwanted as pets. The common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina and the alligator snapping turtle Macrochelys temminckii are freshwater turtles native to North America. Although their trade is regulated in some countries, they have been introduced worldwide as pets. While C. serpentina has established some self-sustaining populations outside its native range, there are no such reports for M. temminckii. However, there are increasing records from the wild for both species, yet a thorough assessment of the potential climatic suitability, observed impacts, and potential invasiveness of these two species has never been performed. To fill this critical gap, we combined species distribution models under current and future climatic scenarios, standardized scoring impact systems (EICAT(+) and SEICAT), and invasiveness risk-screening (AS-ISK). Our results show current and future climatic suitability for both species outside their native range, especially for C. serpentina. In their native ranges, our models predicted a future increase in climatic suitability for C. serpentina, but a decrease for M. temminckii, raising potential concerns for the conservation of this latter species. Only C. serpentina could be assessed for its impacts, being attributed a minor impact score. The invasiveness risk screening attributed a medium risk to C. serpentina and a low risk to M. temminckii. In any case, our results suggest that data collection outside both species' native ranges is necessary to monitor the status of these as non-native species, identifying eventual reproductions in the wild and early detecting incipient invasions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distributions of amphibians, birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities, and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity. In contrast, the global distributions of reptiles, representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, have been unavailable. This prevented the incorporation of reptiles into conservation planning and biased our understanding of the underlying processes governing global vertebrate biodiversity. Here, we present and analyse the global distribution of 10,064 reptile species (99% of extant terrestrial species). We show that richness patterns of the other three tetrapod classes are good spatial surrogates for species richness of all reptiles combined and of snakes, but characterize diversity patterns of lizards and turtles poorly. Hotspots of total and endemic lizard richness overlap very little with those of other taxa. Moreover, existing protected areas, sites of biodiversity significance and global conservation schemes represent birds and mammals better than reptiles. We show that additional conservation actions are needed to effectively protect reptiles, particularly lizards and turtles. Adding reptile knowledge to a global complementarity conservation priority scheme identifies many locations that consequently become important. Notably, investing resources in some of the world's arid, grassland and savannah habitats might be necessary to represent all terrestrial vertebrates efficiently.

In this Article originally published, owing to a technical error, the author 'Laurent Chirio' was mistakenly designated as a corresponding author in the HTML version, the PDF was correct. This error has now been corrected in the HTML version. Further, in Supplementary Table 3, the authors misspelt the surname of 'Danny Meirte'; this file has now been replaced.