No abstract

A major threat to biodiversity is illegal trade, with many unwanted wildlife pets released into exotic environments outside their native distribution. Therefore, many potential invasive species have established in new ecosystems. Ecological niche modeling (ENM) has been used to predict and compare the environmental conditions of natural and exotic population in many groups. We used ENM to compare the climatic niche between natural and exotic areas of Trachemys venusta callirostris, one of the most traded turtles in Colombia. We generated a niche model using the MaxEnt algorithm through the R package kuenm to test several parametrizations and four sets of fresh water environmental predictors. Models were calibrated in the native distribution and projected to non-native zones in Colombia to identify suitable areas for the species. Further, we use a niche similarity test to compare native and exotic environmental space. We found few suitable areas within the projected zone even when using extrapolation; there was a greater suitability in the Magdalena River basin than in the Cauca River basin. Low similarity was detected between the niche comparison of native and exotic areas, suggesting that exotic populations have reached different environmental conditions than the native zone through ilegal trade. Although there was low extrapolation in the exotic area, the models projected ideal conditions in localities with new records for this turtle. The generalist strategies for feeding, thermoregulation, and reproduction in changing conditions may help this T. v. callirostris establish in new ecosystems, and with no current knowledge on dynamics between this exotic species and local fauna, its effects on aquatic communities are unpredictable.

Roadkill and landscape composition affect snakes at different spatial scales, depending on the functional trait value of the species, which is reflected in the functional diversity indices at the assemblage level. This study evaluated the effect of roads and landscape composition on snakes' functional diversity at different areas of influence (250, 500, 1000, and 2000 m buffer areas). We compared roadkill snake species with those assemblages inhabiting the adjacent vegetation in the Orinoco region, Colombia. We surveyed snakes using transects on the road and adjacent areas on

Climate temporality is a phenomenon that affects species activity and distribution patterns across spatial and temporal scales. Despite the global availability of microclimatic data, their use to predict activity patterns and distributions remains scarce, particularly at fine temporal scales (e.g. < month). Predicting activity patterns based on climatic data may allow us to foresee some of the consequences of climate change, particularly for ectothermic vertebrates. The Gila monster exhibits marked daily and seasonal activity patterns linked to physiology and reproduction. Here we evaluate whether ecological niche models fitted using microclimate data can predict temporal activity patterns using the Gila monster Heloderma suspectum as a study system. Furthermore, we identified whether the activity patterns are related to physiological constraints. We used dated occurrences from museum specimens and human observations to generate and test ecological niche models using minimum volume ellipsoids. We generated hourly microclimatic data for each occurrence site for 10 years using the NicheMapR package. For ecological niche modelling, we compared the traditional seasonal approach versus a daily activity pattern strategy for model construction. We tested both using the omission rate of independent observations (citizen science data). Finally, we tested whether unimodal and bimodal activity patterns for each season could be recreated through ecological niche modelling and whether these patterns followed known physiological constraints. The unimodal and bimodal activity patterns previously reported directly from tracking individuals across the year were recovered using niche modelling and microclimate across the species' geographical range. We found that upper thermal tolerances can explain the daily activity patterns of this species. We conclude that ecological niche models trained with microclimatic data can be used to predict activity patterns at high temporal resolutions, particularly on ectotherm species of arid zones coping with rapid climate modifications. Furthermore, the use of high temporal resolution variables can lead to a better niche delimitation, enhancing the results of any research objective that uses correlative models.