Rarely naturalized, but widespread and even invasive: the paradox of a popular pet terrapin expansion in Eurasia

Abstrakt

The North American terrapin, the red-eared slider, has globally recognized invasive status. We built a new extensive database using our own original and literature data on the ecology of this reptile, representing information on 1477 water bodies throughout Eurasia over the last 50 years. e analysis reveals regions of earliest introductions and long-term spatio-temporal dynamics of the expansion covering now 68 Eurasian countries, including eight countries reported here for the rst time.

We established also long-term trends in terms of numbers of terrapins per aquatic site, habitat occupation, and reproduction success. Our investigation has revealed dierences in the ecology of the red-eared slider in dierent parts of Eurasia.

Klíčová slova

• Alien species
• biological invasions
• global change
• invasion ecology
• nature conservation
• wintering