Biological invasions: Predictions of potential risks and applications for biogeography
Biological invasions are not only a primary threat to global biodiversity, but also represent a unique opportunity for testing ecological theory as biogeographical experiments. In this talk, I will first present our predictions on the geographical pattern of invasion risks of non-native freshwater fishes in China, and then discuss results of global overviews of (1) the transferability of species distribution models (SDMs) and (2) the dynamics of climate niche, with a focus on invasive species. We evaluated invasion risk by jointly considering the threats of introduction and establishment under climate change. Introduction threats were estimated according to proxies of human activities and propagule pressure for two primary pathways, and establishment threats were assessed using an ensemble of SDMs under current and future climate scenarios. We found that invasion risks were highest in southeastern China and lowest in the Tibet Plateau. I will also show that model transferability of SDMs is closely associated with taxonomic groups, modelling approaches and environmental similarity. Finally, the study of niche dynamics found that invasive species conserved their climate niche between native and introduced ranges, but the similarity and the difference of breadth between native and introduced niches were related to taxonomic groups, the number of predictors and occurrences, and the pathway and year of introduction.
Host: Jonathan Jeschke