Occurrence of an invasive coral in the southwest Atlantic and comparison with a congener suggest potential niche expansion

摘要: Tubastraea tagusensis, a coral native to the Galapagos Archipelago, has successfully established and invaded Brazilian coast where it modifies tropical rocky shore reef communities. In order understand processes underlying establishment of T. tagusensis, we tested whether Maxent, tool for species distribution modeling, based on range T. tagusensis correctly forecasted invasion this in Brazil. The Maxent algorithm was unable predict as suitable environment T. tagusensis. A comparison between these models principal component analysis (PCA) allowed us examine environmental dissimilarity two occupied regions (native invaded) assess species' niche breadth. According PCA results, lower levels chlorophyll-a nitrate Atlantic segregate environments, implying that may have expanded its realized during process. We possible expansion by assuming spp. similar fundamental niches, which supported exploring space T. coccinea, tropical-cosmopolitan congener believe usage should be treated with caution, especially when applied biological (or climate change) scenarios target highly localized (original) distribution, represent only small portion niche, therefore violation SDM assumption.