[Predicting the potential suitable distribution area of the apple snail Pomacea canaliculata in China based on multiple ecological niche models.]

The high-risk invasive apple snail Pomacea canaliculata has greatly threatened the agriculture, ecosystem integrity and public health. In order to provide scientific evidence for effective prevention and control of P. canaliculata, a most suitable ecological niche model was selected to predict the potential suitable distribution areas of P. canaliculata in China. Based on 377 reported occurrence points and 19 bioclimatic variables, four ecological niche models, MaxEnt, GARP, BIOCLIM, and DOMAIN, the potential geographic suitable distribution areas were predicted for the invasive snail. Then, the results of different models were analyzed and compared with two statistical criteria, the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUC) and Kappa value. The results showed that all of the four ecological niche models could simulate the snail's distributions very well. More specifically, the MaxEnt model outperformed the others in all aspects of predicting the snail's potential distribution (AUC=0.955±0.004, Kappa=0.845±0.017), followed by GARP and DOMAIN. Although BIOCLIM offered the lowest prediction accuracy, its AUC was 0.898±0.017 and its Kappa value was 0.771±0.025. Based on the MaxEnt model, the prediction results showed that the potential suitable distribution areas of P. canaliculata were mainly located in the south of 30° N in China, but there was some regions spreading over the north of 30° N. The potential areas accounted for 13.2% of the national land in area. Notably, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Chongqing, Zhejiang and the coastal areas of Fujian were potentially high-risk areas. In conclusion, this study would be an important reference for the prevention and control of the invasive apple snail P. canaliculata and it also would be an example of predicting the potential distribution of aquatic alien species on large scale.