The toad ahead: challenges of modelling the range and spread of an invasive species

Abstract

An ability to predict the rate at which an organism spreads its range is of growing importance because the process of spread (during invasion by an exotic species) is almost identical to that occurring at the expanding range margins of a native species undergoing range shifts in response to climate change. Thus, the methods used for modelling range spread can also be employed to assess the distributional implications of climate change. Here we review the history of research on the spread of cane toads in Australia and use this case study to broadly examine the benefits and pitfalls of various modelling approaches. We show that the problems of estimating the current range, predicting the futu..