Forecasting Future Invasion Potential and Suitable Habitat Range Shift for Lantana camara in Uganda Under Changing Climate Scenarios

Background Lantana camara , which originated from tropical America, is one of the top 10 invasive plant species globally, and among the top contributors to biodiversity and habitat losses in tropical Africa. Worst of all, its impacts and invasion potential tend to be compounded by climate change driven by ever-rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Numerous studies have revealed that climate change will continue to change habitats and increase its invasion risk. The findings from the study focused on assessing habitat suitability of Lantana camara in Uganda under both current and future environmental conditions. This will help to address the knowledge gap on their future invasion potential, and habitat shift in Uganda with the changing climate conditions. Our study was intended to evaluate the current invasion potential of Lantana camara within Uganda across various climatic conditions and predict their future distributions. We used the Maximum Entropy model with 1,001 cleaned species occurrence points retrieved from GBIF databases and nine climate uncorrelated variables for the model. Results The study showed that 47.2% (113,992 km ² ) of Uganda's land is currently not suitable for Lantana camara invasion, while 6.8% (16,423 km ² ) is highly suitable for its invasion. The results revealed substantial increase in highly suitable areas for invasion by 225.0% (36,960 km ² ) in the future year 2070s’ under SSP5-8.5. However, it is predicted that the unsuitable area will shrink to 32.8% (79,228 km ² ) by 2070 under SSPs5-8.5 climate scenario. These results imply that Lantana camara will spread significantly as future climate change creates condition more favorable to its growth while rendering the environment less suitable to native flora. Conclusions The findings of this study could serve as an evidence-based tools for early identification of areas prone to future invasion, thereby guiding policymakers to come out with possible mitigation strategies.