Potential for high-latitude marine invasions along western North America

Abstract

Aim High-latitude regions host many fewer non-native species than temperate ones. The low invasion loads of these colder regions may change with increases in human-mediated propagule supply. We test the hypothesis that colonization by non-native species that have already invaded temperate shorelines would be precluded by environmental conditions if they were introduced to Alaska and other high-latitude regions by shipping or other vectors.Location Pacific coast of North America as well as coastal oceans world-wide.Methods Using 16 habitat descriptors in ecological niche models, we characterized the conditions throughout the native and introduced distributions of four marine species (Amphibalanus improvisus, Carcinus maenas, Littorina saxatilis and Styela clava) that have invaded multiple global regions to test the extent to which suitable conditions for these species exist in Alaska and other high-latitude regions under current and predicted future climate scenarios.Results Models projected environmental match for all four species in many areas beyond their present range limits, suggesting that Alaska and other high-latitude shorelines are currently vulnerable to invasion by non-native species that occur in lower latitudes.Main conclusions Given current and possibly increasing human-mediated species transfers and suitable environmental conditions that exist now and with projected warming, policy and management efforts are urgently needed to minimize invasion opportunities at high latitudes.

Predicting a range shift and range limits in an introduced tropical marine invertebrate using species distribution models

“…1). Sampling all known presence records does seem to be the best approach for predicting the potential ranges of invasive species (Alexander & Edwards, 2010;de Rivera et al, 2011), but niche shifts, such as the one in the USA SE range (supplementary Fig. 1), may lead to inaccurate predictions of The MaxEnt model trained on native range data was unable to accurately predict the distribution of M. coccopoma in the Atlantic USA SE (Fig.…”

“…The number of extremely cold days (number of days when SSTs were less than 12°C) within the c Atlantic USA SE and d globally introduced species in the introduced range when all known presence locations are included in the models to best describe the fundamental niche and, therefore, increase the probability of prediction in different geographic regions de Rivera et al, 2011). The goal is often to predict the potential distribution for future monitoring and prevention efforts.…”

“…In most cases, SDMs trained to predict the potential extent of invasive species are trained using presence samples from both the native range and invaded range(s) because these models typically outperform models trained using presence data from only the native or invaded range(s) de Rivera et al, 2011). SDMs resulting from inclusion of all of the distribution points are thought to perform better because these models may more closely approximate the fundamental niche, although the fundamental niche is rarely fully described (Araújo & Peterson, 2012).…”

“…Extreme climatic events permit range dynamics to be described over even shorter time scales, and the frequency of extreme weather events is predicted to increase with global climate change (Easterling et al, 2000). Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used to predict shifts in species' distributions associated with climate change and introduced species (de Rivera et al, 2011), but the predictive accuracy of these models is not commonly validated using historical range shifts (for exceptions see: Araújo et al, 2005;Lima et al, 2007;Jones et al, 2009;Hilbish et al, 2012).…”

Marine invasive species in the Arctic

“…For example, the prospect of ocean acidification in Arctic waters is expected to result in the consequent reduction in the biomass of benthic calcifying organisms which could lead to greater opportunities for invasive alien species to take hold in Arctic marine sediments ). Further, a number of marine invasive species are found in subArctic and temperate waters and, with warming sea-surface temperatures in the Arctic, the potential for their northward expansion increases (de Rivera et al 2011). The northward movement of non-native species and introduction of truly invasive species risks the displacement of native Arctic species through increased competition, direct predation or through the introduction of new animal diseases.…”