Modeling potential habitat for alien species of Dreissena polymorpha in the continental USA
美国大陆外来入侵物种斑马纹贻贝(Dreissena polymorpha)潜在生境预测模型

The effective measure to minimize the damage from invasive species is to block the potential invasive species entering into suitable areas. Occurrence records from 1864 locations and 34 environmental variables from Daymet datasets were gathered, four modeling methods including Logistic Regression(LR), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), Genetic Algorithm for Rule-Set Prediction (GARP) and maximum entropy method (Maxent) were used to generate potential geographic distributions for Dreissena polymorpha in the continental USA. Then three statistical criteria including area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUC), correlation (COR) and Kappa were calculated to evaluate the performance of the models, followed by analyses of major variable contributions. Results showed that in terms of three statistical criteria, the predictions from four modeling methods were either excellent or outstanding, in which Maxent outperformed others in three aspects of predicting potential habitat distribution, selection of major contributing factors, quantifying the influence of environmental variables on habitat. Distance to water, elevation, frequency of precipitation and solar radiation were the four forcing environmental factors. The methods suggested in the paper could be used for modeling habitat of Chinese alien species and provide a direction to prevention of Mytilopsis sallei on Chinese coast line.