Ecoregional distributions of the world’s freshwater vertebrate species

Large-scale conservation of biodiversity requires understanding how species are distributed around the world. The first global delineation of freshwater ecoregions (Abell et al. 2008) integrated hydrological boundaries and fish biogeographic patterns to recognize 426 distinctive zones. Here, we update and expand that ecoregional approach to encompass every described freshwater-dependent vertebrate species: 23,130 species of fishes, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. Our database of freshwater vertebrates at the ecoregional scale (FreshVerts v1.0) includes a total of 96,129 ecoregional population records (average of 4.15 records per species, SD = 11.25) based on biogeographic databases and extensive bibliographic searches. This global attribution of all freshwater vertebrates to ecoregions provides a resource for analyzing global biodiversity, comparing biogeographic patterns among vertebrate taxa, and prioritizing efforts to conserve aquatic species across a variety of spatial scales.