An overlooked and extremely localised refuge of vertebrate persistence in the vine forests of subtropical Australia

Dry rainforest or ‘vine forests’ consist of an archipelago of fire-sensitive vegetation that extends through much of tropical and subtropical eastern Australia, often in very small fragments. Here we document a previously overlooked and tiny hotspot of localised vertebrate persistence in a highly discrete and largely cleared southern isolate of vine forest around Mount French in south-east Queensland. We report the presence of isolated populations of mesic-associated skinks in the genera Lampropholis (one species) and Saiphos (two species). Two of these populations are between 100 and 200 km south of main distributions, indicating that these mesic-forest-associated taxa once occurred more widely to the south of their contemporary distributions and have subsequently contracted. Updated spatial analyses of mesic forest herpetofaunal diversity patterns indicate that Mount French represents an endemism hotspot, and we discuss the conservation challenges facing this, and other similar, tiny hotspots of localised vertebrate persistence.