Resumen

KOLB, Melanie; CRUZ-CANO, Ricardo  y  SALDANA-VAZQUEZ, Romeo A.. Roadkill: Quantitative knowledge gaps for terrestrial vertebrates in the neotropics. Acta Zool. Mex [online]. 2025, vol.41, e2705.  Epub 27-Jun-2025. ISSN 2448-8445.  https://doi.org/10.21829/azm.2025.4112705.

Highways have a wide variety of negative effects on distinct groups of organisms. The existing knowledge is concentrated in countries with extra-tropical ecosystems. This systematic review with metanalysis for the neotropics evaluates the effects of traffic and the distance to settlements on the mortality of vertebrate species, as these were the only variables that could be retrieved from the literature. Throughout, formal methodological guidelines were followed, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Revisions and Meta Analysis (PRISMA) model was applied. We selected 69 publications that satisfied all the criteria for data quality, for the period 2005-2022. The mortality of vertebrates increases exponentially with traffic. For every 1000 cars, there is an increase of 11-34% of road-killed vertebrates. The effect size of roads on collisions is the largest for mammals, followed by amphibians and reptiles. The heterogeneity index shows that birds are the only taxa with an effect size below 0 to be road-killed. Distance to settlements causes and increase of 0-15% of collisions with every km. Besides, this study shows the lack of quantitative data, which inhibits the generation of clear and relevant measures that would be needed to give management recommendations or to parametrize spatial models. It is evident that the reviewed studies do not show homogeneity in methods, results and related information that makes it possible to use the presented information in a meta-analysis. It is necessary to put more emphasis on methodological robustness and the comprehensive reporting of results in the publications so that the effect of roads on biodiversity in Latin America can be estimated.

Palabras llave : collision; meta-analysis; mortality; PRISMA; traffic; vertebrates.

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