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Planning conservation actions requires detailed information on species’ geographic distribution. Species distribution data are most needed in areas hosting unique or endangered biodiversity. Italy is one of the European countries with the highest levels of herpetological diversity and endemism and is home to several threatened species of amphibians and reptiles. Information on the distribution of species’ habitats can help identify sites where the species is most likely to thrive, as viable populations depend on it. Area of Habitat (AOH) maps reveal the distribution of the habitat available to the species within their geographic range. We produced high resolution, freely accessible global area of habitat maps for 60 species of reptiles and amphibians distributed in Italy, which represent 60% of all Italian amphibian and reptile species. We validated a total of 44 AOH maps through a presence-only based evaluation method, with 86% of these maps showing a performance better than expected by chance. AOH maps can be used as a reference for conservation planning, as well as to investigate macroecological patterns of Italian herpetofauna. Furthermore, AOH maps can help monitoring habitat loss, which is known to be a major threat to many reptile and amphibian species in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generation length (GL) is defined as the average age of parents of the current cohort, reflecting the turnover rate of breeding individuals in a population. GL is a fundamental piece of information for population ecology as well as for measuring species threat status (e.g. in the IUCN Red List). Here we present a dataset including GL records for all extant mammal species (n=5427). We first reviewed all data on GL published in the IUCN Red List database. We then calculated a value for species with available reproductive parameters (reproductive life span and age at first reproduction). We assigned to missing-data species a mean GL value from congeneric or confamilial species (depending on data availability). Finally, for a few remaining species, we assigned mean GL values from species with similar body mass and belonging to the same order. Our work provides the first attempt to complete a database of GL for mammals; it will be an essential reference point for all conservation-related studies that need pragmatic information on species GL, such as population dynamics and applications of the IUCN Red List assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]