Abstract
One key hypothesis explaining the fate of exotic species introductions posits that the establishment of a self-sustaining population in the invaded range can only succeed within conditions matching the native climatic niche. Yet, this hypothesis remains untested for individual release events. Using a dataset of 979 introductions of 173 mammal species worldwide, we show that climate-matching to the realized native climatic niche, measured by a new Niche Margin Index (NMI), is a stronger predictor of establishment success than most previously tested life-history attributes and historical factors. Contrary to traditional climatic suitability metrics derived from species distribution models, NMI is based on niche margins and provides a measure of how distant a site is inside or, importantly, outside the niche. Besides many applications in research in ecology and evolution, NMI as a measure of native climatic niche-matching in risk assessments could improve efforts to prevent invasions and avoid costly eradications.
Highlights
One key hypothesis explaining the fate of exotic species introductions posits that the establishment of a self-sustaining population in the invaded range can only succeed within conditions matching the native climatic niche
A pressing question in this regard is whether an introduction is more successful if it occurs at a site where the climatic conditions belong to the envelope of conditions experienced by the species within its native range
Factors driving establishment success have mainly been examined at the species—rather than population—level[14], which implies a critical loss of information because the specificities of independent release events are pooled
Summary
One key hypothesis explaining the fate of exotic species introductions posits that the establishment of a self-sustaining population in the invaded range can only succeed within conditions matching the native climatic niche. This hypothesis remains untested for individual release events. Using a dataset of 979 introductions of 173 mammal species worldwide, we show that climate-matching to the realized native climatic niche, measured by a new Niche Margin Index (NMI), is a stronger predictor of establishment success than most previously tested life-history attributes and historical factors.
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