title: Niche shift can impair the ability to predict invasion risk in the marine realm: an illustration using Mediterranean fish invaders.
abstract: Climatic niche conservatism, the tendency of species-climate associations to remain unchanged across space and time, is pivotal for forecasting the spread of invasive species and biodiversity changes. Indeed, it represents one of the key assumptions underlying species distribution models (SDMs), the main tool currently available for predicting range shifts of species. However, to date, no comprehensive assessment of niche conservatism is available for the marine realm. We use the invasion by Indo-Pacific tropical fishes into the Mediterranean Sea, the world's most invaded marine basin, to examine the conservatism of the climatic niche. We show that tropical invaders may spread far beyond their native niches and that SDMs do not predict their new distributions better than null models. Our results suggest that SDMs may underestimate the potential spread of invasive species and call for prudence in employing these models in order to forecast species invasion and their response to environmental change.
authors.affiliation: CRIOBE, USR 3278 CNRS-EPHE-UPVD, LABEX 'CORAIL', University of Perpignan, 66860, Perpignan, France; IRD - UR 227 CoReUs, LABEX 'CORAIL', Laboratoire Arago, BP 44, 66651, Banyuls/mer, France; CESAB-FRB, Immeuble Henri Poincaré, Domaine du Petit Arbois, Avenue Louis Philibert, 13857, Aix-en-Provence Cedex 3, France.
authors.forename: Valeriano
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Parravicini
authors.forename: Ernesto
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Azzurro
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kulbicki
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Belmaker
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D002980:Climate; D055669:Ecological and Environmental Phenomena; D005399:Fishes; D058865:Introduced Species; D008522:Mediterranean Sea; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012306:Risk; D013045:Species Specificity
keywords: Biological invasion; niche conservatism; niche expansion; niche shift; species distribution models