Department of Ecology & Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2021 Apr 21;12(1):2353. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22693-0.
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.
一个解释外来物种引入命运的关键假说假设，在入侵范围内建立一个自我维持的种群，只能在与本地气候小生境相匹配的条件下成功。然而，对于个别释放事件，这一假说仍未得到验证。本研究利用全球 173 种哺乳动物的 979 次引入事件数据集，结果表明，与实现的本地气候小生境相匹配的气候（通过新的生态位边缘指数（NMI）衡量）是建立成功率的更强预测因子，比大多数以前测试过的生活史特征和历史因素更为重要。与基于物种分布模型的传统气候适宜性指标不同，NMI 基于生态位边缘，提供了一种衡量一个地点与小生境内或重要的是小生境外有多远的方法。除了在生态学和进化研究中的许多应用外，NMI 作为衡量本地气候小生境匹配度的指标，在风险评估中可以提高预防入侵和避免昂贵的根除工作的努力。
