engleski

Invasive crayfish species and climate change in Croatia – what can we expect in the future?

Indigenous crayfish species (ICS) in European freshwater are under significant decline in both population numbers and sizes across their ranges due to negative anthropogenic pressure onto their habitats, climate change and non- indigenous crayfish species (NICS). Being more aggressive and fecund in competition for space and food NICS outcompete ICS. Also NICS transfer the lethal disease crayfish plague onto ICS. Croatian freshwater harbours four out of five European ICS, and previous molecular phylogenetic studies have shown high genetic diversity within three of them. Nowadays, in Croatian freshwater three NICS have been recorded, and their expansion is documented. The goal of this study was to predict the potential current and future distribution of two NICS (signal crayfish and spiny-cheek crayfish) in order to develop management programmes. Therefore, Species distribution models (SDMs) were developed. SDMs were built based on the presence only records of the two NICS and a set of environmental predictors that were selected according to their ecological relevance. The SDMs obtained permitted the evaluation of the potential present-day range of the two NICS, as well as the effect of climate change onto their future distribution in Croatian freshwater. This facilitated the prioritisation of locations where NICS have high probability of establishment and where their negative impact onto ICS will be most pronounced. The results indicate that ICS in the rivers of continental Croatia will be under the highest pressure by NICS. Conservation efforts should be focused on the highly diverse populations of stone crayfish and noble crayfish in tributaries of larger lowland rivers.

Pacifastacus leniusculus, Faxonius limosus, species distribution modelling, freshwater, Astacus astacus, Austropotamobius torrentiu

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