The Galapagos Marine Reserve is renowned for its great biodiversity and high level of endemism worldwide. However, globalisation and climate change have exposed it to biological invasions that could irreversibly affect its ecosystems. With the recent introduction of Amathia verticillata, we have sought to determine its distribution and understand its dispersal factors in order to determine areas of high risk of invasion within the marine reserve. The development of a species distribution model using MaxEnt together with the analysis of maritime traffic allowed us to determine not only the inhabit and highly frequented areas of the archipelago, but also the north and west of Isabela, Fernandina and Marchena as areas of highest risk of invasion of the bryozoan, in addition to its affinity with high concentrations of chlorophyll. This underlines the need for constant monitoring of these more pristine and high biodiverse areas to prevent dispersal, as well as to develop more predictive models using the marine traffic to implement effective biosecurity methods in order to control inter-island dispersal.
Key words: Galapagos Marine Reserve, biological invasions, Amathia verticillata, Species distribution models, maritime traffic, inter-island dispersal
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