Predicting the Risk of Exotic Plants Invasions in the Orinoco Region: Importance of Distribution Models, Climatic Niche and Functional Richness

We used potential species distribution models developed in MaxEnt and a database of nine functional traits associated with invasion success for 18 exotic species with a high risk of establishment and difficulty of control in the Orinoco region.

We found that 67% of the species differed from the centroid in the climatic niche when comparing native and invaded localities. Overall, the native distribution localities showed a more restricted dispersal in their climatic niche, and for all species, native distribution was found within the broad environmental gradients of the invaded localities. Additionally, we found high climatic suitability for all species of exotic species across all the biomes and ecosystems; however, transformed biomes showed the higher taxonomic and functional richness of exotic plant species in transformed biomes with low spatial congruency between those metrics.