Conservation and Ecology of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Bhutan - Dataset

Abstract

Conservation and Ecology of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Bhutan is based on the four data chapters. <br><br> Literature review data (1972–2022) to report “Five decades of research on Bhutan’s amphibian and reptile – priorities and opportunities for the future”. <br><br> The second data set on “Employing citizen science to understand amphibian and reptile diversity and distribution in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan” was obtained through a dedicated social media page in which citizens were encourage to deposit the data. As many as 929 data points collected from 2014 to 2019 were used to map (using GIS and ArcMap) the species occurrence and report species new to the country. As many as 25 new species records were provided to Bhutan in their species list through this research. <br><br>

The third data set used to run a maxent model to predict the expansion or shrinkage species habitat for conservation and management of other amphibians and reptiles with King Cobra as a umbrella species. We used environmental data (worldclim.org) from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) to predict the current and future distribution of O. hannah in Bhutan, considering historical climate records. Our findings indicate a present suitable area of 11857 km2 in the Kingdom. We expect habitat suitability to increase in the future, potentially leading to an upsurge in human-snake conflicts. <br><br> The fourth data consists of individual interview conducted online using Qualtrics forum which considered three key questions: <br>1. Attitude towards snakes and frogs using Likert type measurement. <br>2. Factors that influence the peoples’ attitude in which a list of probable factors are provided and respondents score according to what they think is correct <br>3. On how the respondents agree or disagree (Likert type) to conserve frogs and snakes.<br><br>