In taxonomy, the location from which the specimens used to formally describe a new species are collected is called type locality. These sites can be thought of as the formal birthplace of the species, in the same way the scientific article containing the original description constitutes its scientific birth certificate, as this is how the species officially acquires its identity and name within the scientific community.
Of the 505 locations in Ecuador where amphibian species were first described, only 21% (i.e. 107) are located within the National System of Protected Areas, while 27% are in agricultural land and an additional 7% are in urbanized areas. This is the main finding of a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, which, for the first time, georeferenced and analyzed all these sites across the country.
The research team from the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja gathered information on the 695 amphibian species recorded in the country to reconstruct where and when they were described; of these, 326 are known only from Ecuador. Of the total, 151 have an extremely restricted distribution, and 69 are known to occur only in their type locality and its surroundings.
The study found that type localities tend to be closer to roads and cities. While the initial phase of species description (up to 1950) focused on accessible areas, afterwards researchers expanded their samplings to higher altitudes and remote sites. As more regions have been explored, new species and type localities have continued to be discovered, revealing Ecuador's rich biodiversity. Furthermore, a complex relationship between the number of species described at a site and its diversity has been observed, primarily due to inaccessibility.
In Abra de Zamora and the city of Loja (within a 10x10 kilometre area), there is a concentration of type localities for 14 frog species, the highest number in the entire country; eight of the species are recorded only here. Of these, three species were collected in the 1930s by the Ecuadorian naturalist Clodoveo Carrión. With the expansion of urbanization, the populations of some of these amphibians have declined and have not been recorded again for decades.
The researchers also calculated that 34% of typical localities in Ecuador are in areas where land use is changing drastically due to human activities such as agriculture, urbanization, and deforestation.
The study shows that type localities can contribute to developing a new perspective for guiding conservation efforts, especially in sites that harbor microendemic species but also have high cultural and social value. The authors suggest that, in some cases, a viable way to protect these sites would be through the expansion of existing reserves, such as the Podocarpus National Park, to conserve biodiversity in the Abra de Zamora area, with which it shares a border.
