Do we have the necessary insights to classify species according to their conservation status? A case study in the world’s southernmost lizard genus

Endemic species generally have higher risk of extinction; therefore, it is necessary to focus conservation actions on these groups. Tools such as the Red List, through its criteria (A, B, C, D and E) allow to establish extinction risk and a conservation status for the species. Liolaemus is a highly diversified genus of lizards from southern South America. In Chile, 64% of the species within this genus are endemic, and more than 25% are threatened. However, for most of Liolaemus we have little biological information. In this study, to assess whether the current insights are sufficient to establish the conservation statuses of these species and to determine the criteria on which the current conservation statuses are based, a bibliographic review of all available information was conducted for the Chilean endemic Liolaemus species. Our results show that the most-used criteria were those of distribution (B and D). However, abundance studies were poorly represented. Species with wider distributions present the highest number of studies and more restricted species are little studied. Finally, many evaluations are based on the expert’s opinion. We conclude that further current and temporal studies of abundance and distribution, key aspects of ecology to assess species, are essential to generate an adequate conservation status of the genus.