Alien And Invasive Species

An alien species is not native to a specific location, where it arrived accidentally or deliberately. The species can be also invasive, i.e. it may spread to a degree that may cause damage to the environment, economy, and human health. Alien invasive species can have serious impact upon biodiversity, including decline or elimination of native species through competition, predation, or transmission of pathogens, and the disruption of local ecosystems and ecosystem functions. It has been estimated that since the 17th century, invasive alien species have contributed to nearly 40% of all animal extinctions for which the cause is known (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2006). Today, their damage is catalysed by climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and human pressure on ecology. In this regard, the EU regulation 1143/2014 (1 January 2015) on invasive alien species advises a set of measures to be taken across the EU. These include prevention, early detection, and management actions. This Virtual Research Environment (VRE) supports decision makers and scientists in predicting the near-future spread of an invasive species (possibly alien) in a new environment. The VRE hosts examples of suitable habitat maps produced for today and 2050 in new areas for more than 11,000 species and provides models and workflows to combine environmental data with species observations in their habitats to predict their future spread. One complete experiment is reported as an example in the "Forecasting the Pufferfish Invasion" tab in this VRE, that shows how the near-future invasion of the Mediterranean Sea by the silver-cheeked toad-fish Lagocephalus sceleratus (Gmelin, 1789) was predicted using the offered services.