Zoogeographic regionalisation of terrestrial vertebrates of Mozambique

Abstract

During the formative years of science-based biodiversity conservation and planning, Mozambique was undergoing a prolonged post-colonial liberation struggle (1964–1974) and subsequent civil war (1976–1992), resulting in a profound gap in biodiversity knowledge and conservation planning relative to other countries in the region. This study represents Mozambique's first post-war (1992 to the present) zoogeographic regionalisation at a fine scale, using 20 years of terrestrial vertebrate data comprising 54 species and 27,199 records that cover 53% of the 0.5° grid cells of the country, with 35% of cells having sufficient data for subsequent quantitative analysis. Cluster and Indicator species (IndVal) analysis were used to delimit zooregions and to identify their characteristic species, respectively, while Redundancy analysis was used to relate environmental variables to vertebrate groups. These analyses divided Mozambique into six zooregions (Niassa, Tete, Gilé, Marromeu-Gorongosa, Limpopo-Zinave-Banhine and Maputo). Our study reveals that the zooregions identified are not adequately protected by the current network of protected areas. An expanded network of protected areas is needed to ensure biodiversity conservation in Mozambique.