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Taxonomy
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Geography
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Biodiversity
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Literature
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Amphibian section
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© Rune Midtgaard
This website summarizes the taxonomy, distribution, and literature of the world's reptiles.
Originally published as a limited version of the e-book RepFocus - A Survey of the Reptiles of the World, it is now in the process of becoming fully and freely accessible online.
The 1st edition was published on June 5th, 2019.
Since then, taxonomic and distribution updates have been added on a regular basis.
RepFocus is currently no longer available as an e-book publication, but it may become available again in the future.
RepFocus is divided into the sections
Taxonomy,
Geography,
Literature,
and Biodiversity.
The contents are described below.
| The
Taxonomy
section includes checklists of all the reptiles of the world.
The format used include scientific (Latin) names and common names in English, German, and Danish.
Genera and species are provided with taxonomic history.
The distributions are described in detail with direct links to regional checklists with references.
New or revised distribution maps are continuously added.
Currently, 6,836 maps are included, representing 56% of the world's species.
In addition to this, all genera, families, and higher categories are represented with maps.
The Taxonomy section is updated continuously, with a summary under "Recent updates" (see menu above).
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The
Geography
section included 1,076 regional checklists of reptiles when first published in 2019, representing all the world's countries, as well as many states, provinces, archipelagos, and islands.
These checklists are now in the process of being updated.
At the time of writing, about half of these have been updated and uploaded to the website.
The rest are expected to become available online during 2023.
Each checklist will eventually include a summary statistic on the reptile biodiversity of the region, including the number of endemic species and the degree of endemism.
All checklists are based almost entirely on published literature.
These references are included in the list for each species.
Relative to the taxonomic checklists, the regional checklists are not updated as frequently.
The compilation date for each checklist is indicated in each page.
Consequently, discrepancies between the taxonomic and the regional checklists may occur.
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The
Biodiversity
section is still under development, but will present various statistics on reptiles, many of which have not been compiled or published collectively before.
Among many others, the statistics include:
- the total number of families, genera, and species of reptiles in the world
- which countries that have most recorded species, genera and families
- the frequency of species descriptions since 1758
Similar statistics are available for each family, main group, and for some, selected genera, with more to come in the future.
As opposed to the taxonomic checklists, the biodiversity statistics are not updated continuously.
The compilation date for each checklist is indicated in each page.
Consequently, discrepancies between the taxonomic checklists and the biodiversity statistics may occur.
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The
Literature
section includes bibliographies of all reptile genera, families, and higher categories, as well as of all countries and many other regions of the world.
Subject literature lists are in preparation.
The bulk of the bibliography relates to taxonomy and distribution, but also publications dealing with natural history, conservation, captive maintenance, etc.
have been included, making RepFocus a valuable tool, not just for researchers, but also for other dedicated naturalists, conservationists, NGOs, zoo staff, etc.
The bibliography currently includes more than 119,000 references, which makes RepFocus the most extensive bibliography of reptiles ever compiled in a single publication.
The Literature section will be updated under "Recent updates" (link above), but will only be integrated into the individual relevant bibliographies at a less frequent rate.
The first comprehensive update process since the 2019 launch is currently on-going.
The compilation date for each bibliography will be noted.
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Amphibian section
is not nearly as extensive as the reptile section, the main subject of this website.
The section includes lists of all amphibian families and genera, but currently serves mainly as a photo gallery.
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The RepFocus website is best viewed at a 1366x768 pixels screen resolution or larger.
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