Resumen de las ideas fundamentales de los 10 papers del listado final de bibliografía
📌 Biological invasions are globally recognized as one of the major threats to biodiversity and are drivers of high economic losses worldwide (Bates & Bertelsmeier 2021).
📌 Niche conservatism assumes that an introduced species will establish only under climatic conditions similar to those in its native range. However, if niche shifts are frequent and substantial, this would challenge the global forecasts of future biodiversity that rely on these correlative models (Bates & Bertelsmeier 2021).
📌 Introduced species offer a “semi-natural experiment” for invasion ecologists, as they encounter novel environmental conditions when transported beyond their native range (Bates & Bertelsmeier 2021).
📌 Assessing the frequency and amplitude of niche shifts (a change in the position or limits of the niche) is an unresolved issue of extreme importance for biodiversity forecasts (Bates & Bertelsmeier 2021).
Sobre el punto anterior, no solamente entre lo nativo vs lo exótico, también entre diferentes zonas invadidas por la especie exótica. Esto se ha hecho poco.
📌 For small-sized species (like mollusks), macroclimates may not adequately represent the microclimatic conditions experienced by the organism (Bates & Bertelsmeier 2021).
Mejor la variables físico-químicas y biológicas del punto ambinetal en el que vive. Modeliza mejor el nicho de las condiciones microclimáticas que no son detectadas por modelos de nicho macroclimáticos.
También puede suceder que loas zonas invadidas sean radicalmente opuestas desde el punto de vista ambiental a la zona nativa o a otra zona invadida.
📌 Biological invasions offer a unique opportunity to study how species colonize new environments and whether they retain their native climatic niche in the newly occupied geographical range (Guisan et al. 2014).
📌 The answer to whether most species retain their native niche is fundamental to both theoretical and applied ecology, especially for assessing invasion risks using ecological niche models (Guisan et al. 2014).
📌 There is evidence both supporting and opposing climatic niche conservatism during invasions (Guisan et al. 2014).
📌 Niche comparisons must be corrected for the distribution of the available environment, as differences in environmental availability can lead to the detection of an apparent niche shift that merely reflects the fact that certain conditions are more or less common in one range than in another (Guisan et al. 2014).
📌 It directly compares the environmental attributes of the species’ occurrence sites in environmental space. This approach is not based on an underlying model and has been shown to quantify niche overlap more accurately than Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) (Guisan et al. 2014).
Lo anterior respecto a los modelos que analizan el espacio ambiental, no el geográfico.
📌 It is advisable to use at least the ordination approach to quantify climatic niche shifts (Guisan et al. 2014).
📌 Mechanistic models assume that the realized niche does not differ from the fundamental niche. Empirical models assume that the influence of biotic interactions (competitors, predators, mutualists) does not change across space or time. This is problematic, as these interactions do vary, and invasive species often show significant differences (such as the enemy release hypothesis) (Jeschke and Strayer 2008).
📌 To investigate the mechanisms underlying geographic ranges (whether they are limited by climate or by non-climatic factors) (Jeschke and Strayer 2008).
📌 The ecological niche is a fundamental concept for understanding species distribution patterns and developing conservation strategies (Lin et al. 2020).
📌 Aquatic species showed much lower niche similarity but greater expansion and unfilling, indicating a higher ability to colonize new environments (Lin et al. 2020).
📌 In the meta-analysis of Lin et al. (2020) the native niche is typically 1.52 times larger than the introduced niche, suggesting that introduced populations represent a subset of the native climatic niche.
Pero lo anterior para una especie nativa de una isla…..
📌 The native distribution of a species is often constrained by historical, geographic, and biotic interactions such as competition, predation, and parasitism. When a species, like the invasive snail, is transported to a new region, it may be released from these constraints and encounter favorable ecological conditions for establishment and spread (Loo et al. 2007).
📌 The problem is exacerbated when the native species of an island ecosystem (or a geographically limited area) has physiological tolerances that exceed the conditions found in its place of origin. In such cases, models built solely with native range data can significantly underestimate the species’ potential range in a larger and more ecologically heterogeneous location (Loo et al. 2007).
📌 Models built using invasion-range data proved to be more useful and informative, producing more accurate predictions than models built with native-range data. This suggests that the snail’s broad environmental tolerance allows it to thrive under environmental conditions not found in New Zealand (Loo et al. 2007).
📌 Molluscs represent the second largest and most speciose invertebrate phylum after Arthropoda. Globally, approximately 7000 molluscan species have been described from freshwater habitats. These organisms are a crucial component of benthic freshwater communities and play an important role in ecosystem functioning. Their ecological contributions include nutrient cycling, sediment dynamics, and habitat modification, thereby influencing the overall health and stability of aquatic ecosystems (Mahapatra et al. 2023).
📌 Due to increasing globalization, trade, and transport, freshwater molluscs are frequently introduced to new environments, where they become problematic to native biodiversity and humans. A large proportion of freshwater macroinvertebrate invaders are molluscs and crustaceans (Mahapatra et al. 2023).
📌 The fundamental assumption of niche conservatism—the idea that a species maintains its ancestral ecological requirements. Under this assumption, invasive species are expected to occupy an equivalent niche in the introduced range compared to their native range. However, reliance on this assumption is challenging because niche shifts have been demonstrated during the introduction of many species across diverse taxa (e.g., fish, insects, plants, amphibians) (Mahapatra et al. 2023).
📌 Niche Dynamics Findings (Mollusks): This meta-analysis of 28 invasive freshwater molluscs reveals that a significant number of species (22 out of 28) have undergone shifts to a different extent in their climatic niche. This finding suggests that many species have the potential to survive novel climatic conditions, as their native-occupied climatic niche is often not conserved in introduced ranges. For example, species like Pomacea diffusa, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, and Viviparus viviparus show a niche expansion in the invaded region, occupying novel climatic niches. Conversely, only two species, Corbicula fluminea and Physella acuta, follow niche conservatism (Mahapatra et al. 2023).
📌 Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are necessary tools for predicting the potential spread of invaders, especially under climate change (Mahapatra et al. 2023).
📌 The study of species distributions is heavily influenced by the fundamental concept of niche conservatism. Niche conservatism is the tendency for a species’ niche to remain little changed over time (i.e., to exhibit temporal autocorrelation). This pervasive assumption is utilized as a primary justification for applying Species Distribution Models (SDMs) (also known as niche-based models). These models are critical tools used to predict the establishment and spread of invasive species (Pearman et al. 2008).
📌 Empirical evidence suggests that niche shifts frequently occur over relevant timescales (Pearman et al. 2008).
📌 Niche shifts and conservatism have both been observed within the last 100 years (Pearman et al. 2008).
📌 This type of shift often results from changing ecological processes when the species moves to a new area. A common example is when an exotic species experiences release from natural enemies (e.g., competitors, parasites, predators) in the new environment, allowing it to occupy portions of its fundamental niche that were previously constrained in the native range (Pearman et al. 2008).
📌 These models are based on the theory of the niche, where a species’ niche is described as a hypervolume of environmental conditions required to support a persistent population. In practice, correlative SDMs capture the realized niche, which is the environmental space a species is confined to due to interactions with other species and dispersal restrictions. The validity of using SDMs to predict invasion probabilities into new areas fundamentally relies on the assumption of niche conservatism. Niche conservatism requires that the realized niche is conserved between the native and invaded ranges (Torres et al. 2018).
📌 In the analysis of 22 invasive freshwater invertebrates, niche shift was detected frequently. A high majority (90%) of the species studied showed a significant niche change (Torres et al. 2018).
📌 These results suggest that niche shifts are more common for freshwater invertebrates than they are for many other groups, including terrestrial plants (14% shift), birds (29%), marine fish (33%), and even herpetofauna (57%) and insects (54%) (Torres et al. 2018).
📌 Shifts in the realized niche can be the result of adaptive evolution in the new range, or, commonly, from changes in biotic interactions (such as enemy release) or dispersal constraints. For example, the non-native mudsnail (Potamopyrgus antipodarum) and the crayfish (Orconectes virilis) exhibit examples where biotic exclusion in the native range (e.g., high parasite incidence or competition) could lead to a realized niche expansion in the invaded range (Torres et al. 2018).
📌 Invasive species are listed as a key factor responsible for the extinction of 261 animal and 39 plant species worldwide. Among these invaders, freshwater alien invasive mollusks constitute one of the most dangerous groups (Yang et al. 2023).
📌 The ecological niche describes the range of environmental conditions under which a species occurs. This concept provides an essential foundation for invasion ecology because it links the distributions of Alien Invasive Species (AIS) with environmental variables and potential range shifts under global climate change. Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) are widely used to predict the potential distributions of AIS and their shifts under global change scenarios, assisting in the development of management strategies (Yang et al. 2023).
📌 Freshwater ecosystems are highly sensitive, containing greater biodiversity per unit surface area than terrestrial and marine ecosystems, despite accounting for only 0.01% of the world’s water resources. Within this context, freshwater invasive mollusks constitute one of the most dangerous groups of invaders (Zhang et al. 2025).
Guisan, A., Petitpierre, B., Broennimann, O., Daehler, C. and Kueffer, C. (2014) Unifying niche shift studies: insights from biological invasions. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29(5). doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2014.02.009.
Jeschke, J.M. and Strayer, D.L. (2008) Usefulness of Bioclimatic Models for Studying Climate Change and Invasive Species. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1134, pp. 1–24.
Liu, C., Wolter, C., Xian, W. and Jeschke, J.M. (2020) Most invasive species largely conserve their climatic niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Loo, S. E., Mac Nally, R. and Lake, P. S. (2007) Forecasting New Zealand Mudsnail Invasion Range: Model Comparisons Using Native and Invaded Ranges. Ecological Applications, 17(1), pp. 181–189.
Mahapatra, B. B., Das, N. K., Jadhav, A., Roy, A. and Aravind, N. A. (2023) Global freshwater mollusc invasion: pathways, potential distribution, and niche shift. Hydrobiologia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-023-05299-z.
Pearman, P.B., Guisan, A., Broennimann, O. and Randin, C.F. (2008) Niche dynamics in space and time. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23(3), pp. 195–203.
Torres, U., Godsoe, W., Buckley, H.L., Parry, M., Lustig, A. and Worner, S.P. (2018) Using niche conservatism information to prioritize hotspots of invasion by non- native freshwater invertebrates in New Zealand. Diversity and Distributions, 24(12), pp. 1802–1815.
Yang, R., Cao, R., Gong, X. and Feng, J. (2023) Large shifts of niche and range in the golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata), an aquatic invasive species. Ecosphere, 14(1): e4391.
Zhang, R., Gao, Y., Wang, R., Liu, S., Yang, Q., Li, Y. and Lin, L. (2025) Analyzing Possible Shifts in the Climatic Niche of Pomacea canaliculata Between Native and Chinese Ranges. Biology, 14, 1127. doi: 10.3390/biology14091127.