ReptileMAP: Reptile Atlas of Africa

This data-set comprises validated species occurrence records of Reptiles across Africa, although the bulk of the data is for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini (former Swaziland). It is a collection of data from citizen science contributions, museum collections, personal notebooks, published literature records, and other unpublished sources. Records range from 1834 to present. ReptileMAP is a Virtual Museum and citizen science project which aims to determine the distribution and conservation priorities of Reptiles on the African continent. ReptileMAP is building the 21st century distribution maps for Africa's reptiles. ReptileMAP also aims to improve public awareness of the value and plight of reptiles and also provide government agencies with a clear definition of conservation priorities that will help them to plan their activities. ReptileMAP is the continuation of the Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment (SARCA) and incorporates the full SARCA database. Identification of citizen science records, based on the photos uploaded, is done by a panel of experts in the relevant taxa. The taxonomy is kept up-to-date by the project coordinator, a professional herpetologist. The data available to the public is the subset of shareable records (see Lineage for details), also, records for sensitive taxa are not available to the public. Records are provided at the recorded precision, usually point coordinates. However, historical records were assigned to a 15x15 minute grid (or QDS) based on the locality description when no coordinates were provided. The coverage is good for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, moderate for Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, but very sparse for the rest of Africa.