Catherine S Jarnevich, Mark A Hayes, Lee A Fitzgerald, Amy A Yackel Adams, Bryan G Falk, Michelle A M Collier, Lea' R Bonewell, Page E Klug, Sergio Naretto, Robert N Reed
Invasive reptilian predators can have substantial impacts on native species and ecosystems. Tegu lizards are widely distributed in South America east of the Andes, and are popular in the international live animal trade. Two species are established in Florida (U.S.A.) - Salvator merianae (Argentine black and white tegu) and Tupinambis teguixin sensu lato (gold tegu) - and a third has been recorded there- S. rufescens (red tegu). We built species distribution models (SDMs) using 5 approaches (logistic regression, multivariate adaptive regression splines, boosted regression trees, random forest, and maximum entropy) based on data from the native ranges...
July 5, 2018: Scientific Reports