Ecological Niche Models Applied to Biological Invasions: the Case of Cirsium vulgare (Savi) Ten. Across Continents.

EasyChair Preprint no. 10483, version 3

Abstract

Global environmental degradation as a consequence of anthropogenic activities makes it necessary to open new lines of research into the causes and effects of alterations in ecosystems. An important approach is to see how the niche dynamics of invasive species change between different geographic areas. We analyzed the distribution pattern of Cirsium vulgare  (Savi) Ten. a plant of the family Asteraceae originating from the Eurasian region that currently invades large areas of the world. Its niche shifts between continents were estimated using a combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and ecological niche modeling (ENM) on a large dataset from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). For this purpose, a set of bioclimatic variables and the Human Footprint (HFP) at a resolution of 10 km were selected. Our results showed that the species has a marked global tendency to expand towards warmer climates and with less seasonality, although in some regions its invasiveness seems to be lower than in others. The models had good statistical behavior and high consistency in relation to the known distribution of the species and allowed us to establish the relative weight of the contribution of each variable used, with annual temperature and seasonality being the determining factors in the establishment of the species. The combination of this methodology with an adequate selection of variables represents a very useful tool when focusing efforts on invasive species management.

Keyphrases: Dinámica de nicho ecológico, invasiones biológica, MaxEnt, Modelo de nicho ecologico

@Booklet{EasyChair:10483,
  author = {Jhony Cruz and Natalia Cruz and Felipe Lema and Carolina Carrasco},
  title = {Ecological Niche Models Applied to Biological Invasions: the Case of Cirsium vulgare (Savi) Ten. Across Continents.},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 10483},

  year = {EasyChair, 2024}}