The bii4africa dataset of faunal and floral population intactness estimates across Africa's major land uses.

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species' population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate 'intactness scores': the remaining proportion of an 'intact' reference population of a species group in a particular land use, on a scale from 0 (no remaining individuals) to 1 (same abundance as the reference) and, in rare cases, to 2 (populations that thrive in human-modified landscapes). The resulting bii4africa dataset contains intactness scores representing terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: ±5,400 amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and vascular plants (±45,000 forbs, graminoids, trees, shrubs) in sub-Saharan Africa across the region's major land uses (urban, cropland, rangeland, plantation, protected, etc.

A taxonomic revision of the south-eastern dragon lizards of the (Boulenger) species complex in southern Africa, with the description of a new species (Squamata: Cordylidae).

A recent multilocus molecular phylogeny of the large dragon lizards of the genus Stanley et al. (2011) recovered a south-eastern clade of two relatively lightly-armoured, geographically-proximate species ( (Boulenger, 1908) and (Van Dam, 1921)). Unexpectedly, was found to be paraphyletic, with individuals sampled from northern Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) being more closely related to than to from the type locality of Barberton in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa.

A review of Cordylus machadoi (Squamata: Cordylidae) in southwestern Angola, with the description of a new species from the Pro-Namib desert.

The girdled lizard genus Cordylus is represented in Angola by two species, Cordylus angolensis and C. machadoi, separated from their nearest congeners by over 700 km. Here we describe a new species, Cordylus namakuiyus sp.

Molecular phylogeny of the Afroedura nivaria (Reptilia: Gekkonidae) species complex in South Africa provides insight on cryptic speciation.

The Afroedura nivaria species complex (A. nivaria, A. karroica, A.

A molecular phylogeny of the African plated lizards, genus Gerrhosaurus Wiegmann, 1828 (Squamata: Gerrhosauridae), with the description of two new genera.

We constructed a molecular phylogeny of the African plated lizard family Gerrhosauridae using two mitochondrial markers (ND2, 732 bp; 16S, 576 bp) and one nuclear marker (PRLR, 538 bp). This analysis showed that the subfamily Gerrhosaurinae consists of five major clades which we interpret as representing five genera. The genera Tetradactylus and Cordylosaurus were each recovered as monophyletic, but Gerrhosaurus as currently conceived is paraphyletic, consisting of three distinct genus-level assemblages.