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Global analysis of the influence of environmental variables to explain distributions and realized thermal niche boundaries of sea snakes
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  • Carlos Patrón-Rivero,
  • Luis Osorio-Olvera,
  • Octavio R. Rojas-Soto,
  • Xavier Chiappa-Carrara,
  • Fabricio Villalobos,
  • Kevin Lopez Reyes,
  • Brooke L. Bessesen ,
  • Carlos Yañez-Arenas
Carlos Patrón-Rivero
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Facultad de Ciencias

Corresponding Author:c.patron.rivero@gmail.com

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Luis Osorio-Olvera
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Instituto de Ecologia
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Octavio R. Rojas-Soto
Instituto de Ecologia
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Xavier Chiappa-Carrara
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores Unidad Merida
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Fabricio Villalobos
Instituto de Ecologia
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Kevin Lopez Reyes
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Facultad de Ciencias
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Brooke L. Bessesen
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,University of Reading, Reading, UK
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Carlos Yañez-Arenas
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Facultad de Ciencias
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Abstract

Understanding the factors that affect species’ distributions is a central topic of ecology and biogeography. However, the majority of research about this topic has focused on species inhabiting terrestrial environments. At broad scales, abiotic variables consistently serve as the primary determinants of species’ distributions. In this study, we investigate the explanatory power of different abiotic variables in determining the distributional patterns of sea snakes on a global scale. Additionally, as the boundaries of realized thermal niches have significant implications for the ecology of the species and their geographic distributions, we also evaluated the asymmetry of realized thermal limits (i.e., differences in variances between upper and lower limits of the realized thermal niche). We obtained global environmental variables and occurrence data for each species across their entire known geographic range. Using this data, we employed a correlative ecological niche modeling procedure to analyze the influence of individual variables in explaining species’ distributions. To estimate the realized thermal limits of each species, we extracted the mean, minimum, and maximum values of temperature at four depths (superficial, mean benthic, minimum benthic, and maximum benthic) for each occurrence record of the species. We then evaluated the asymmetry of the realized thermal niche by measuring and comparing the variances of the upper and lower limits. Both analyses (the importance of variables and realized thermal limit asymmetry) were performed at three taxonomic levels (sea snakes as a lineage of marine-adapted elapids [true sea snakes + sea kraits], subfamily, and genus) and at two spatial resolutions. Overall, we found that temperature, phosphate, nitrate, salinity and silicate concentrations were the most influential factors in explaining the spatial distribution patterns of sea snakes, regardless of the taxonomic level or spatial resolution. Similarly, we observed that the realized thermal limits were asymmetric with higher variance in the lower limits, and that this asymmetry decreases as the taxonomic level and spatial resolution increased. Finally, our results align with previous findings regarding patterns of asymmetry in realized thermal limits and the significant influence of abiotic variables in explaining the distribution of marine species.
26 May 2023Submitted to Marine Ecology
27 May 2023Submission Checks Completed
27 May 2023Assigned to Editor
07 Jun 2023Reviewer(s) Assigned