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Although future anthropogenic climate change is recognized as one of the major threats to European species, its implementation during reserve planning has only been started recently. We here describe climate change impacts on the Iberian endemic lizard Lacerta schreiberi expecting serious declines and range reductions due to a loss of suitable climate space in the next future. We apply species distribution models to assess possible future changes in the lizard’s range, identify areas with high extinction risk meriting conservation efforts and analyze whether the Natura 2000 network in its current stage will offer a sufficient protection for the genetically most valuable lineages. Despite a very good coverage and connectivity of the most valuable populations of L. schreiberi with the existing protected sites network, our results predict a strong loss of genetic variability by 2080. Also, two main patterns become evident: While the genetically less diverse north-western populations may be less affected by climate change, the climate change effects on the southern isolates and the genetically most diverse populations within the Central System may be devastating. To improve a successful prospective conservation of L. schreiberi the management of protected sites needs to consider the processes that threaten this species. Furthermore, our study highlights the urgent need to consider climate change effects on evolutionary significant units within the Natura 2000 framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South-western Europe has a rich diversity of lacertid lizards. In this study, we evaluated the occupancy patterns and niche segregation of five species of lacertids, focusing on large-bodied species (i.e., adults having >75 mm snout-vent length) that occur in south-western Europe (Italian to the Iberian Peninsula). We characterized the niches occupied by these species based on climate and vegetation cover properties. We expected some commonality among phylogenetically related species, but also patterns of habitat segregation mitigating competition between ecologically equivalent species. We used multivariate ordination and probabilistic methods to describe the occupancy patterns and evaluated niche evolution through phylogenetic analyses. Our results showed climate niche partitioning, but with a wide overlap in transitional zones, where segregation is maintained by species-specific responses to the vegetation cover. The analyses also showed that phylogenetically related species tend to share large parts of their habitat niches. The occurrence of independent evolutionary lineages contributed to the regional species richness favored by a long history of niche divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]