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Salinity, not only temperature, drives tropical fish invasions in the Mediterranean Sea, and surface-only variables explain it better

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Abstract

The increasing success of invasive warm water species is often explained as a direct consequence of a warming climate, but other environmental variables are seldomly taken into account. Here, running RandomForest models with many combinations of relatively uncorrelated environmental predictors, we investigate the factors influencing the distribution of Red Sea fishes in the Mediterranean Sea, which was invaded through the Suez Canal. Our results highlighted the fundamental role of salinity, not only temperature, in determining the distribution of these tropical species, with average values (primarily salinity and surface sea temperatures) performing the best of the respective groups. Noteworthy, models based on surface variables only resulted in higher evaluation scores than those including also bottom variables. These findings contribute to identifying the most relevant factors that explain tropical fish distribution in the Mediterranean Sea and provide advice to the selection of environmental variables in species distribution modeling.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by the Interreg-Med Programme MPA-Engage (1MED15_3.2_M2_337) and by the project @CNR USEIt. We also acknowledge the support of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Project “National Biodiversity Future Center - NBFC” code CN_00000033, Concession Decree No. 1034 of Italian Ministry of University and Research funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research - ISPRA (PRES-PSMA), Via Vitaliano Brancati, 48, 00144, Rome, Italy

    Manuela D‘Amen

  2. IRBIM CNR, Institute of Biological Resources and Marine Biotechnologies – National Research Council, Ancona, Italy

    Manuela D‘Amen, Sonia Smeraldo & Ernesto Azzurro

  3. Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Mezzogiorno, Via della Salute, 2, 80055, Portici (Naples), Italy

    Sonia Smeraldo

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  1. Manuela D‘Amen
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  2. Sonia Smeraldo
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  3. Ernesto Azzurro
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Correspondence to Manuela D‘Amen.

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D‘Amen, M., Smeraldo, S. & Azzurro, E. Salinity, not only temperature, drives tropical fish invasions in the Mediterranean Sea, and surface-only variables explain it better. Coral Reefs 42, 467–472 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-023-02357-9

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