Kelly Catherine L, Gordon Iain J, Schwarzkopf Lin, Pintor Anna, Pople Anthony, Hirsch Ben T
College of Science and Engineering James Cook University Townsville Queensland Australia.
Fenner School of Environment & Society Australian National University Canberra Australian Capital Territory Australia.
Ecol Evol. 2023 Jul 3;13(7):e10251. doi: 10.1002/ece3.10251. eCollection 2023 Jul.
Invasive species have established populations around the world and, in the process, characteristics of their realized environmental niches have changed. Because of their popularity as a source of game, deer have been introduced to, and become invasive in, many different environments around the world. As such, deer should provide a good model system in which to test environmental niche shifts. Using the current distributions of the six deer species present in Australia, we quantified shifts in their environmental niches that occurred since introduction; we determined the differences in suitable habitat between their international (native and invaded) and their Australian ranges. Given knowledge of their Australian habitat use, we then modeled the present distribution of deer in Australia to assess habitat suitability, in an attempt to predict future deer distributions. We show that the Australian niches of hog (), fallow (), red (), rusa (), and sambar deer (), but not chital deer (), were different to their international ranges. When we quantified the potential range of these six species in Australia, chital, hog, and rusa deer had the largest areas of suitable habitat outside their presently occupied habitat. The other three species had already expanded outside the ranges that we predicted as suitable. Here, we demonstrate that deer have undergone significant environmental niche shifts following introduction into Australia, and these shifts are important for predicting the future spread of these invasive species. It is important to note that current Australian and international environmental niches did not necessarily predict range expansions, thus wildlife managers should treat these analyses as conservative estimates.
入侵物种已在世界各地建立了种群，在此过程中，其实际环境生态位的特征发生了变化。由于鹿作为猎物来源很受欢迎，它们已被引入世界各地的许多不同环境并成为入侵物种。因此，鹿应该提供一个很好的模型系统来测试环境生态位的变化。利用澳大利亚现存的六种鹿的当前分布，我们量化了自引入以来它们环境生态位的变化；我们确定了它们在国际（原生和入侵）分布范围与澳大利亚分布范围内适宜栖息地的差异。鉴于我们了解它们在澳大利亚的栖息地利用情况，我们随后对澳大利亚鹿的当前分布进行建模，以评估栖息地适宜性，试图预测鹿未来的分布。我们发现，野猪鹿、黇鹿、赤鹿、泽鹿和水鹿在澳大利亚的生态位与它们在国际上的分布范围不同，但花鹿除外。当我们量化这六个物种在澳大利亚的潜在分布范围时，花鹿、野猪鹿和泽鹿在其当前占据的栖息地之外有最大面积的适宜栖息地。其他三个物种已经扩展到我们预测为适宜的范围之外。在这里，我们证明鹿在被引入澳大利亚后经历了显著的环境生态位变化，这些变化对于预测这些入侵物种未来的扩散很重要。需要注意的是，当前澳大利亚和国际上的环境生态位不一定能预测其分布范围的扩大，因此野生动物管理者应将这些分析视为保守估计。
