Abstract
The ongoing global decline in the species diversity of amphibians and reptiles, and limited resources to study natural history, reinforce the need for the adequate sampling of all the different information pertaining to biological diversity that characterizes these organisms. Decision-making processes by conservationists should be based on reliable knowledge, and the analysis of the scientific literature guarantees access to the available biological information. We assessed the major herpetology journals and described the patterns and trends in the publication of natural history notes on amphibians and reptiles on a global scale over the past decade. Our results show that there is considerable geographic and taxonomic bias in the studies reported in the notes, with the United States, Brazil, and Mexico representing the top countries, and Bufonidae, Craugastoridae, Agamidae, and Colubridae the top families in publications. Research efforts were not influenced systematically by the conservation status target species, and we recorded more studies related to nonendangered species than to endangered ones. Overall, natural history notes have great potential for reducing knowledge shortfalls in herpetology studies.
