Hull fouling marine invasive species pose a very low, but plausible, risk of introduction to East Antarctica in climate change scenarios

Aims: To identify potential hull fouling marine invasive species that
could survive in East Antarctica presently and in the future. Location:
Australia's Antarctic continental stations: Davis, Mawson and Casey,
East Antarctica; and subantarctic islands: Macquarie Island and Heard and
McDonald Islands. Methods: Our study uses a novel machine-learning
algorithm to predict which currently known hull fouling MIS could survive
in shallow benthic ecosystems adjacent to Australian Antarctic research
stations and subantarctic islands, where ship traffic is present. We used
gradient boosted machine learning (XGBoost) with four important
environmental variables (sea surface temperature, salinity, nitrate and
pH) to develop models of suitable environments for each potentially
invasive species. We then used these models to determine if any
Australia's three Antarctic research stations and two subantarctic
islands could be environmentally suitable for MIS now and under two future
climate scenarios. Results: Most of the species were predicted to be
unable to survive at any locations between now and the end of the century,
however, four species were identified as potential current threats, and
five as threats under future climate change. Asterias amurensis was
identified as a potential threat to all locations. Main conclusions: This
study suggests that the risk are very low, but plausible, that known hull
fouling species could survive in the shallow benthic habitats near
Australia's East Antarctica locations and suggest a precautionary
approach is needed by way of surveillance and monitoring in this region,
particularly if propagule pressure increases. Whilst some species could
survive as adults in the region, their ability to reach these locations
and undergo successful reproduction is considered unlikely based on
current knowledge.