Márton Szabolcs

Centre for Ecological Research Hungary

Many herpetofauna species have been introduced outside of their native range. MtDNA barcoding is regularly used to determine the provenance of such populations. The alpine newt has been introduced across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland. However, geographical mtDNA structure across the natural range of the alpine newt is still incomp...

The genus Pelophylax (water frogs) includes relatively common, widely distributed, and even invasive species, but also endemic taxa with small ranges and limited knowledge concerning their ecology and evolution. Among poorly studied species belong endemics of the southwestern Balkans, namely Pelophylax shqipericus, P. epeiroticus and P. kurtmueller...

Background Understanding predator–prey relationships is fundamental in many areas of ecology and conservation. In reptiles, basking time often increases the risk of predation and one way to minimise this risk is to reduce activity time and to stay within a refuge. However, this implies costs of lost opportunities for foraging, reproduction, and the...

Flood protection measures can have large impacts on ecosystems and their biodiversity, yet direct comparisons of active and inactive floodplains are rare. We compared the number of roadkilled individuals of two semiaquatic water snakes ( Natrix natrix and N. tessellata ) on 58 km of road sections bordered either by an active floodplain or a flood-p...

The decline of farmland bird populations starting in the 1980s has induced intense research on farmland biodiversity conservation in Europe. Although many studies assessing the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes have concentrated on birds, farmland birds, surprisingly, have not yet been targeted directly by permanent, landscape-scale resto...

1. Understanding animals’ selection of microhabitats is important in both ecology and biodiversity conservation. However, there is no generally accepted methodology for the characterisation of microhabitats, especially for vegetation structure. 2. Here we present a method that objectively characterises vegetation structure by using automated proces...

Background Understanding predator-prey relationships is fundamental in many areas of ecology and conservation. Basking time often increases the risk of predation and one way to minimise this risk is to reduce activity time and to stay within a refuge. However, this implies costs of lost opportunities for foraging, reproduction, and thermoregulation...

Freshwater ecosystems host disproportionately high numbers of species relative to their surface area yet are poorly protected globally. We used data on the distribution of 1631 species of aquatic plant, mollusc, odonate and fish in 18,816 river and lake catchments in Europe to establish spatial conservation priorities based on the occurrence of thr...

The slow-worm lizards (Anguis) comprise five species occurring throughout most of the Western Palearctic. Although these species are relatively uniform morphologically – with the exception of A. cephallonica, which exhibits a quite unique morphology – they are genetically deeply divergent. Here, we provide detailed distribution maps for each species...

We summarised the records of Tarentola mauritanica in Albania. The first record for the country was published in 1989 from Sazan Island; however, it was never confirmed again. Another population was found recently in an urban habitat of Vlorë City near the main city port, probably of human-mediated origin.

The European green lizards of the Lacerta viridis complex consist of two closely related species, L. viridis and L. bilineata that split less than 7 million years ago in the presence of gene flow. Recently, a third lineage, referred to as the “Adriatic” was described within the L. viridis complex distributed from Slovenia to Greece. However, whethe...

The degradation and loss of habitats are one of the major causes of the recent global decline of amphibian populations, and wetland ecosystems are increasingly restored to counter these effects. However, there is little information on how restoration of non-wetland habitats such as grasslands affect amphibians in wet-terrestrial habitat complexes....

Ecosystem restoration implies focusing on multiple trophic levels and ecosystem functioning, yet higher trophic levels, i.e., animals, are less frequently targeted by restoration than plants. Habitat diversity, the spatial heterogeneity between and within habitat patches in a landscape, is a well‐known driver of species diversity, and offers possib...

Spatial prioritization in systematic conservation planning has traditionally been developed for several to many species and/or habitats, and single-species applications are rare. We developed a novel spatial prioritization model based on accurate estimates of remotely-sensed data and maps of threats potentially affecting long-term species persisten...

High‐quality information on predator–prey relationships is fundamental in understanding food webs, community assembly and ecosystem functioning. Recent analytical advances have made it possible to develop new trait‐based approaches to study trophic relationships and evaluate trait matching between predators and prey. Here, we develop a novel analyt...

Cryptic phylogeographic diversifications are unique models to examine the role of phylogenetic divergence on the evolution of reproductive isolation, without extrinsic factors such as ecology. Yet, to date very few comparative studies were attempted within such radiations. Here, we characterize a new speciation continuum in a group of widespread Eu...

In some cases, species’ distributions have not been accurate and some geographical areas were not accounted for in the New Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles of Europe (NA2RE), a project per-formed by the Mapping Committee of the Societas Europaea Herpetologica (SEH). The distribu-tion of species within the Vipera ursinii-renardi group were presented...

Albania is part of the Mediterranean biodiversity hotspot. Yet its amphibian fauna is poorly known due to little scientific exploration during the long political isolation of the country. To fill this gap, we constructed a georeferenced database with occurrences of all known amphibian species based on records from published sources and personal data...

Although Albania has a rich reptile fauna, efforts to reveal its diversity have so far been limited. To fill this gap, we collected available published and unpublished (museum collections, online sources) records of reptile occurrences and conducted several expeditions to search for reptiles in areas with few or no previous records. Our georeferenc...

SEH Grant in Herpetology – Mapping and Distributions 2015 – Report

In the present paper color and pattern variations of Hierophis gemonensis, a snake with little morphological variation, are described. For the first time, partially melanistic individuals were observed and described for this species. The identity of one of these snakes was corroborated by genetic means. Taxonomical circumstances and environmental c...

SEH Grant in Herpetology - Mapping and Distributions 2016 - Report

The conservation of freshwater ecosystems has lagged behind that of marine and terrestrial ecosystems and often requires the integration of large‐scale approaches and transboundary considerations. This study aims to set the foundations of a spatial conservation strategy by identifying the most important catchments for the conservation of freshwater...

The occurrence of the Italian wall lizard (Podarcis siculus) in Albania is confirmed. Our findings are now the southernmost known records of the species on the eastern Adriatic coast, and officially present a new reptile species for the Albanian herpetofauna. The origin of these records is discussed; molecular investigation is needed for future eva...

Vipera ursinii graeca is a restricted-range, endemic snake of the Pindos mountain range in the southwestern Balkans. The subspecies was previously reported from eight localities in Greece and one locality in southern Albania. We used species distribution modelling based on climate data from known localities in Greece to estimate the potential distr...