Nicolas Urbina-Cardona

Pontificia Universidad Javeriana · Department of Ecology and Territory

Conversion of tropical forests to agriculture affects vertebrate assemblages, but we do not know how fast or to what extent these assemblages recover after field abandonment. We addressed this question by examining amphibians and reptiles in secondary forests in southeastern Mexico. We used chronosequence data (12 secondary forests fallow for 1–23...

We evaluated the effect of tropical dry forest edges in fragments on reptile structure and ecological groups, and their relationship to 15 environmental variables in the Caribbean Region, Colombia. We used 15 pasture-edge-interior gradients and 12 permanent linear transects per gradient, sampling them on three occasions between January and December...

This study determines the composition of amphibian ensembles along a vegetation gradient in the coastal Pacific rainforests in Colombia. Eight environmental and structural variables were measured to characterize the species' habitats and to determine which was most important in structuring amphibian patterns. After a total of 432 man-hours sampling...

We evaluated the relationship between amphibian and reptile diversity and microhabitat dynamics along pasture–edge–interior ecotones in a tropical rainforest in Veracruz, Mexico. To evaluate the main correlation patterns among microhabitat variables and species composition and richness, 14 ecotones were each divided into three habitats (pasture, fo...

One of the most important tools in conservation biology is information on the geographic distribution of species and the variables determining those patterns. We used maximum-entropy niche modeling to run distribution models for 222 amphibian and 371 reptile species (49% endemics and 27% threatened) for which we had 34,619 single geographic records...

Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action1,2. Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment3,4. Here we report the findings of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, evaluating 8,011 species for the Inter...

Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action1,2. Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment3,4. Here we report the findings of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, evaluating 8,011 species for the Inter...

Colombian herpetology has more than 200 years of research, but so far, the state of the art of scientific publications that have shaped this discipline is unknown. Through a systematic review of the literature between 1741 and 2020, we found 2199 papers, of which 70,3 % have been published since 2000. Of the 394 scientific journals that have contri...

The rate and extent of global biodiversity change is surpassing our ability to measure, monitor and forecast trends. We propose an interconnected worldwide system of observation networks — a global biodiversity observing system (GBiOS) — to coordinate monitoring worldwide and inform action to reach international biodiversity targets.

Roadkill and landscape composition affect snakes at different spatial scales, depending on the functional trait value of the species, which is reflected in the functional diversity indices at the assemblage level. This study evaluated the effect of roads and landscape composition on snakes' functional diversity at different areas of influence (250,...

Pollination is a vitally important function in nature and becomes an ecosystem service because it influences the food and nutritional security for people. However, the contribution of different functional traits of insects for pollen transport of plants is still poorly known. We explore the relationship between pollinator insect functional traits a...

This study aimed to assess the attitudes and perceptions of inhabitants in the Andean region of Colombia towards 17 native terrestrial vertebrate species and the associated sociodemographic factors, such as gender and locality. The data was collected through semi-structured surveys of 100 participants, and five variables were evaluated on a Likert...

We searched for scientific papers, book chapters, and proceedings published between 2005 and 2021 using a query string for each database. We segmented the data, compiled the metadata for each peer-reviewed article, and deleted duplicates. We used a filter to review each document's titles, abstracts, and keywords. The raw data are 1670 scientific pa...

Background and Research Aims: Globally, Colombia is the country with the largest extent of Páramos (delimited in 36 complexes) and with the greatest number of amphibian species in this ecosystem. This work consolidated scientific literature on the amphibians of the Colombian Páramos to characterize temporal, taxonomic, thematic, and geographic patt...

The process of mapping ecosystem services is experiencing a significant surge in usage, with exponential growth being observed. However, conservation knowledge shortfalls have yet to be characterized, which can lead to essential gaps in decision-making and public policy. We aim to describe thematic changes in mapped ecosystem services and their use...

El Semillero de Ecología y Conservación de Anfibios y Reptiles (SECAR) de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ) se originó del Grupo Javeriano Estudiantil de Herpetología. SECAR fue constituido oficialmente como Semillero de Investigación ante la Vicerrectoría de Investigación PUJ en el año 2016. Su objetivo es promover entre los estudiantes de...

tStrengthening participation of Global South researchers in tropical ecology and conservation is a target ofour scientific community, but strategies for fostering increased engagement are mostly directed at GlobalNorth institutions and researchers. Whereas such approaches are crucial, there are unique challenges toaddressing diversity, equity and i...

Aim Deforestation of the Atlantic Forest of eastern Paraguay has been recent but extensive, resulting in a fragmented landscape highly influenced by forest edges. We examined edge effects on multiple dimensions of small mammalian diversity. Location Forest fragments of eastern Paraguayan Atlantic Forest. Methods We trapped small mammal species at...

The establishment of pastures and forestry plantations has increased globally to meet growing demands for meat and wood products. Pasture and plantation expansion often drives deforestation, which causes homogenization of biotic communities and is a major driver of the global extinction crisis. A core question is how the severity of losses varies b...

El procesamiento de los artículos requiere de atención para poder minimizar el número de errores que se cometen al momento de diligenciar los datos. Es común encontrar mayores errores en aquellas columnas que requieren el ingreso de más campos.

En la Orinoquia, lo cuerpos de agua lénticos presentan cambios drásticos en acumulación de agua, lo que impone filtros ambientales para los anuros que tienen ciclos de vida complejos. Es importante conocer cómo cambian los ensamblajes de anuros en etapa larval a lo largo de períodos de acumulación de agua y su relación con las variables abióticas,...

La Amazonia Colombiana alberga la mayor riqueza de anfibios del país, pero a su vez presenta las mayores tasas de deforestación y cifras de decomiso de anuros por tráfico ilegal. Es importante entonces consolidar el estado del arte en las investigaciones sobre los anuros de la región amazónica de Colombia, para poder identificar los retos en la inv...

Los anfibios son organismos ectotermos altamente dependientes de la humedad, por lo que pueden ser muy susceptibles a cambios ambientales y estar expuestos a pérdidas constantes de agua. El páramo presenta presiones de deshidratación muy marcadas debido a los ciclos circadianos abruptos en términos de temperatura y humedad, que varían con la estaci...

Para los anuros, algunas variables fisiológicas como la Temperatura Crítica y Tasa de pérdida o absorción de agua), son relativamente fáciles de medir en laboratorio. Sin embargo, los protocolos in situ son muy diversos y en algunos casos requieren métodos complejos. Por esta razón se propuso la creación de dos montajes portátiles para la medición...

Con una historia de más de dos siglos de investigación, la herpetología colombiana tiene sus bases en un acervo documental que hasta el momento no ha sido sistematizado. Se realizó una revisión sistemática de literatura en bases de datos académicas y revistas científicas locales. Se encontraron 2249 publicaciones entre artículos científicos, capítu...

The process of biological invasions resulting from the introduction of exotic species is one of the most critical components of global environmental change. Although many hypotheses try to explain the processes underlying biological invasions, changes in land use are essential drivers mediating the colonization of exotic species at the landscape le...

Taxonomical and functional facets of diversity are crucial to understanding the effects of landscape transformation on species assemblages, although there is a lack of consensus on the degree of congruence between diversity indices across land-uses. We evaluated the effect of natural and anthropogenic land cover types on anurans in the Andean regio...

We conducted a keyword search to sample a subset of research on landscape ecology published in Biotropica between 2016 and mid‐2021. Our search returned 112 studies, which we summarize in terms of focal taxon and habitat. From this pool of studies, we selected 14 papers for the virtual special issue “Insights from a Landscape Ecological Perspective...

Tropical montane cloud forest harbors great species diversity in a small area of the planet and has a high proportion of endemics. At the local scale, species richness is low, but species turnover is high. We examined how amphibian species richness and the number of endemic species varies in cloud forests along a latitudinal gradient (23°N–5°S) in...

Given the increasing threats to biodiversity and limited resources for conservation, our knowledge about the uncertainty in surrogates for representing comprehensively the spatial conservation priorities for biodiversity, needs to be improved. We present a comprehensive spatial conservation approach for Neotropical biodiversity by including surroga...

Land use intensification imposes selective pressures that systematically change the frequency of wild population phenotypes. Growing evidence is biased towards the comparison of populations from discrete categories of land uses, ignoring the role of landscape emerging properties on the phenotype selection of wild fauna. Across the largest urban-rur...

El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar cambios en la diversidad taxonómica y funcional de anfibios en 9 coberturas vegetales en un paisaje altamente fragmentado en los Andes de Colombia. Se registraron 88 individuos de 11 especies de anfibios y la mayor riqueza se presentó en la zona interna del bosque. A partir de 6 rasgos funcionales, se clasifi...

The study of tadpole assemblages allows inferring habitat availability and using their occupation as a means of proxy for the effective reproduction of the species, contributing to complementary information for the study of their adult forms. Environmental variables, represented by abiotic variables, vegetation structure, matrix management, and lan...

Land-use intensification imposes selective pressures that systematically change the frequency of wild population phenotypes. Growing evidence is biased towards the comparison of populations from discrete categories of land uses, ignoring the role of landscape emerging properties on the phenotype selection of wild fauna. Across the largest urban-rur...

Human perceptions vary between rural and urban environments, determining the degree to which people are able to coexist with biodiversity. It is important to identify the sociodemographic factors that determine these local perceptions to adjust amphibian conservation strategies in recognition of the particular conditions of different human communit...

The present study sought to determine the effect of spatial heterogeneity, a product of the different vegetation mosaics and environmental and structural gradients of the paramo, on the structure of anu-ran assemblage in a sector of Chingaza National Park. Environmental and structural variables were recorded from aerial photographs taken with a dro...

If combined with anthropogenic disturbances and global climatic change, hurricanes may lead to major effects on animal populations and assemblages. The combined effects of cumulative natural and human disturbances on vertebrates have been little studied. There is evidence that herpetofaunal assemblages are sensitive in species richness, abundance,...

This preprint has been published in the Ethnobiology and Conservation Journal following the peer-review process: Vergara-Rios, D., Montes-Correa, A. C., Urbina-Cardona, J. N., De Luque-Villa, M., E. Cattan, P., & Granda, H. D. (2021). Local community knowledge and perceptions in the Colombian Caribbean towards Amphibians in urban and rural settings...

Urbanization is one of the most pervasive processes of landscape transformation, responsible for novel selection agents promoting functional community homogenization. Bats may persist in those environments, but the mechanisms responsible for their adaptability and the spatial scales in which the landscape imposes environmental filtering remain poor...

Functional diversity is a tool for understanding biological communities and the influence of environmental filters on assembly rules. However, few studies explore the relationships of diversity metrics across contrasting ecosystems. We evaluated the effect of ecosystems (tropical dry forest and pine-oak forest) and seasons (wet and dry) on the func...

Across human history, venomous snakes have been an important source of attention in arts, engineering, spirituality and, of course, in science and medicine. In part, human interest in snakes is due to the potential threat that they exhibit to human health but at the same time to the ecological, evolutionary and biotechnological relevance of their v...

Decades of research suggest that species richness depends on spatial characteristics of habitat patches, especially their size and isolation. In contrast, the habitat amount hypothesis predicts that: 1) species richness in plots of fixed size (species density) is more strongly and positively related to the amount of habitat around the plot than to...

Over 70% of land in the tropics is in some form of agricultural matrix which poses a threat to biodiversity. In Colombia, montane regions are dominated by varying intensities of agriculture and high levels of biodiversity and endemism. Globally, Colombia has the second largest number of amphibian species and is also the third largest coffee produce...

Vulnerability to habitat fragmentation Habitat fragmentation caused by human activities has consequences for the distribution and movement of organisms. Betts et al. present a global analysis of how exposure to habitat fragmentation affects the composition of ecological communities (see the Perspective by Hargreaves). In a dataset consisting of 448...

Climate and land-use change, raise significant threats to biodiversity, affecting species ranges worldwide. Both factors operate on different scales, so including spatial traits that allow them to be appropriately evaluated is relevant to the early identification of extinction risks. We aimed to evaluate the potential effects of climate and land-us...

Los páramos son ecosistemas que presentan un alto grado de endemismo. Esta diversidad se encuentra explicada por diversos procesos históricos como: eventos tectónicos y adaptaciones ecológicas y fisiológicas de la biota, en respuesta a las condiciones climáticas extremas, y las características del terreno. Uno de los linajes de vertebrados ectoterm...

Tree density affects species diversity in forest plantations. Understory species diversity, tree regeneration, and soil physicochemical characteristics were assessed under three planting densities of Pinus massoniana in Taizishan Mountains, Hubei, China. There was a higher degree of shrub and herb species diversity in lower density stands. Total sp...

En bs-T la alta tasa histórica de transformación de hábitat, ha cambiado la configuración del paisaje, dejando un mosaico de coberturas naturales inmersas en una matriz de coberturas antropogénicas. Estos paisajes antropizados presentan condiciones altamente variables de temperatura, precipitación y estructura vegetal, imponiendo filtros ambientale...

Los anfibios y reptiles son animales asombrosos y su biología es mucho más Fascinante y variada de lo que originalmente se consideraba. Esta afirmación se soporta fácilmente en múltiples aspectos, entre los cuales sobresale, su reproducción (Duellman & Trueb 1994; Wells 2007; Balshine 2012; Gómez-Mestre et al. 2012; Vitt & Caldwell 2014; Pough et a...

Los anfibios y reptiles son animales asombrosos y su biología es mucho más Fascinante y variada de lo que originalmente se consideraba. Esta afirmación se soporta fácilmente en múltiples aspectos, entre los cuales sobresale, su reproducción (Duellman & Trueb 1994; Wells 2007; Balshine 2012; Gómez-Mestre et al. 2012; Vitt & Caldwell 2014; Pough et a...

1. Species recovery after forest disturbance is a highly studied topic in the tropics, but considerable debate remains on the role of secondary forests as biodiversity repositories, especially regarding the functional and phylogenetic dimensions of biodiversity. Also, studies generally overlook how alpha and beta diversities interact to produce gam...

Understanding the effects of climate change (CC) on biodiversity is complex because it involves multiple scales of biodiversity, biotic interactions, phenology, asynchronies, and spatial scales. By reviewing publications on the relationship between CC and biodiversity, the areas of knowledge and institutions that contribute to understanding the sub...

Species traits provide a strong link between an organism's fitness and processes at community and ecosystem levels. However, such data remains scarce for amphibians in the neotropics. Colombia is the country with the highest number of threatened amphibians and the second greatest number of amphibian species worldwide. We present a data set containi...

We sampled the snake fauna in 13 landscapes along 80 km of highway and in the adjacent vegetation cover in the Colombian Llanos. We registered 119 snakes belonging to 33 species. Traffic levels significantly influenced rates of snake road kill, while adjacent vegetation cover, rainfall seasonality, and landscape structure and composition did not. W...

Species distribution modeling (SDM) is a booming area of research that has had an exponential increase in use and development in recent years. We performed a search of scientific literature and found 5,533 documents published from 1993 to 2018 using SDM, representing a global network of 4,329 collaborating institutions from 155 countries, with Braz...

Variación intraespecífica de rasgos en Pristimantis bogotensis (Anura: Craugastoridae) y su relación con el microhabitat, en el Valle de Frailejones del PNN Chingaza La variabilidad intraespecífica en los rasgos de las especies juega un papel clave sobre los ensamblajes, la selección de hábitat y el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas. Esta variabili...

En varias disciplinas de las ciencias básicas, se ha reportado un menor número de publicaciones lideradas por mujeres. Para Colombia, se ha despertado un interés entorno a los desafíos para lograr la igualdad de género en el gremio herpetológico, sin embargo, no se poseen datos concretos que permitan analizar esta situación. Este trabajo analiza lo...

The Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species (GRIIS) presents validated and verified checklists (inventories) of introduced (alien) and invasive alien species at the country, territory, and associated island level. Phase 1 of the project focused on developing validated and verified checklists of countries that are Party to the Convention...