Predicting future invaders and future invasions

1

Inglés. Invasive alien species are a great threat to biodiversity and humanlivelihoods worldwide. The most effective way to limit their impacts and costs is to prevent their introduction into new areas.Identifying invaders and invasions before their occurrence wouldarguably be the most efficient strategy. Here, we provide a profiling method to predict which species—with which particular ecological characteristics—will invade, and where they could invade.We illustrate our approach with ants, which are among the mostdetrimental invasive species, as they are responsible for declinesof numerous taxa, are involved in local extinctions, disturb ecosystem functioning, and impact multiple human activities. Based onstatistical profiling of 1,002 ant species from an extensive traitdatabase, we identify 13 native ant species with an ecological profile that matches that of known invasive ants. Even though they arenot currently described as such, these species are likely to becomethe next global invaders. We couple these predictions with speciesdistribution models to identify the regions most at risk from theinvasion of these species: Florida and Central America, Brazil, Central Africa and Madagascar, Southeast Asia, Papua New GuineaNortheast Australia, and many islands worldwide. This framework,applicable to any other taxa, represents a remarkable opportunityto implement timely and specifically shaped proactive managementstrategies against biological invasions.