Predicting establishment of non-native fishes in Greece: identifying key features
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1
MARE - Centro de Ciências do Mar e do Ambiente, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
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2
IIRTA Aquatic Ecosystems, Spain
Non-native fishes are known to cause economic damage to human society and are considered a major threat to biodiversity loss in freshwater ecosystems. The growing concern about these impacts has driven to an investigation of the biological traits that facilitate the establishment of non-native fish. However, invalid assessment in choosing the appropriate statistical model can lead researchers to ambiguous conclusions. Here, we present a comprehensive comparison of traditional and alternative statistical methods for predicting fish invasions using logistic regression, classification trees, multicorrespondence analysis and random forest analysis to determine characteristics of successful and failed non-native fishes in Hellenic Peninsula through establishment. We defined fifteen categorical predictor variables with biological relevance and measures of human interest. Our study showed that accuracy differed according to the model and the number of factors considered. Among all the models tested, random forest and logistic regression performed best, although all approaches predicted non-native fish establishment with moderate to excellent results. Detailed evaluation among the models corresponded with differences in variables importance, with three biological variables (parental care, distance from nearest native source and maximum size) and two variables of human interest (prior invasion success and propagule pressure) being important in predicting establishment. The analyzed statistical methods presented have a high predictive power and can be used as a risk assessment tool to prevent future freshwater fish invasions in this region with an imperiled fish fauna.
Acknowledgements
Christos Gkenas (SFRH/BPD/84859/2012) was supported by the Portuguese Science Foundation from the Programa Operacional Potencial Humano/Fundo Social Europeu (POPH/FSE)
Keywords:
biological invasions,
Invasion pathway,
Non-native fishes,
random forest,
CART analysis,
Logistic regression
Conference:
XV European Congress of Ichthyology, Porto, Portugal, 7 Sep - 11 Sep, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Ecology, Conservation and Invasive Species
Citation:
Gkenas
C,
Alcaraz
C and
Ribeiro
F
(2015). Predicting establishment of non-native fishes in Greece: identifying key features
.
Front. Mar. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
XV European Congress of Ichthyology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2015.03.00075
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Received:
16 Nov 2015;
Published Online:
17 Nov 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Christos Gkenas, MARE - Centro de Ciências do Mar e do Ambiente, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1749-016, Portugal, chrisgenas@gmail.com