Provenance Errors and Vagrants: Their Role in Underestimating the Conservation Status of Sea Kraits (Elapidae: Laticaudinae)

Abstract

Erroneous locality records and those based solely on vagrants have provided an unrealistic assessment of the true distribution (area of occupancy) of breeding populations of sea kraits (genus Laticauda). This distortion over-estimates the extent of their geographic ranges and seriously under-estimates their conservation status.