Global Invasion of Lantana camara: Has the Climatic Niche Been Conserved across Continents?

Abstract

Lantana camara, a native plant from tropical America, is considered one of the most harmful invasive species worldwide. Several studies have identified potentially invasible areas under scenarios of global change, on the assumption that niche is conserved during the invasion process. Recent studies, however, suggest that many invasive plants do not conserve their niches. Using Principal Components Analyses (PCA), we tested the hypothesis of niche conservatism for L. camara by comparing its native niche in South America with its expressed niche in Africa, Australia and India. Using MaxEnt, the estimated niche for the native region was projected onto each invaded region to generate potential distributions there. Our results demonstrate that while L. camara occupied subsets of its original native niche in Africa and Australia, in India its niche shifted significantly. There, 34% of the occurrences were detected in warmer habitats nonexistent in its native range. The estimated niche for India was also projected onto Africa and Australia to identify other vulnerable areas predicted from the observed niche shift detected in India. As a result, new potentially invasible areas were identified in central Africa and southern Australia. Our findings do not support the hypothesis of niche conservatism for the invasion of L. camara. The mechanisms that allow this species to expand its niche need to be investigated in order to improve our capacity to predict long-term geographic changes in the face of global climatic changes.

Predicting the potential distribution of Lantana camara L. under RCP scenarios using ISI-MIP models

“…Recent studies have revealed the different directions of niche change in this species among continents (i.e. expansion in India vs. contraction in Australia and Africa) (Goncalves et al 2014). However, whether the principle of niche conservatism held for this species was not tested in these previous studies or this study.…”

Niche expansion of the invasive plant species Ageratina adenophora despite evolutionary constraints

“…Bioclimatic variables derived from primary climatic data represent the relevant seasonal trends and physiological limits of species (Nix, ; O'Donnell & Ignizio, ) and hence are useful for understanding and predicting species distributions (Goncalves et al, ; Hodgins & Rieseberg, ; Lobo, Jiménez‐Valverde, & Hortal, ; Ramírez‐Albores, Bustamante, & Badano, ). We used all 19 bioclimatic variables (see Appendix S3) from WorldClim 1.4 (Hijmans, Cameron, Parra, Jones, & Jarvis, ), at a 2.5 arc minutes resolution (http://www.worldclim.org/version1).…”

Lantana camara L. (sensu lato): an enigmatic complex

“…Likewise, innumerable intentional as well as unintentional hybridization events in Lantana led to remarkable increase in its complexity. Anthropogenically-induced genetic diversity in the species complex indeed facilitated the species to invade heterogeneous habitats (Cilliers 1983, Bhagwat et al 2012, Goncalves et al 2014. The highly invasive species now exists in 60 countries and island groups of Asia, Africa and Australia (Cronk andFuller 1995, Day et al 2003b).…”

“…High diversity in the complex and continuing hybridization events may potentially broaden its ecological tolerance in climatically suitable as well as unsuitable areas (Goncalves et al 2014). Furthermore, realizing remarkable spread and better performance of the invasive genets in warmer areas, it is highly probable that invasive Lantana will increase its expanse noticeably in future climate change scenarios (Zhang et al 2014).…”