Greater future range expansions in alien than native ant species

There is growing concern that many species may not be able to track suitable conditions under climate change and suffer range contractions as a result. At the same time, alien species introduced to novel geographic ranges are often assumed to benefit from climate change. However, it remains unknown whether potential future ranges of alien species will increase more in size than those of native species following climate change. To test that, we predicted potential ranges of both native and alien species under current and future climatic conditions using the same modelling framework. Using species distribution models, we projected the present and future (to 2050) potential ranges of 396 native and 81 alien ants across North America, including 55 non‐invasive alien and 26 invasive ant species. Our results confirmed that climate change impacted native and alien ants differently, with alien species experiencing greater range expansion. Additionally, a greater share of alien ant species (between 81.5 and 84.0%, depending on the future climate scenario) were predicted to undergo net range expansion, whereas native ants were significantly associated with net range contraction (between 57.0 and 63.0%). By contrast, the invasiveness status of alien species had no consistent impact on predicted range expansion. Overall, all alien ants have wider distributions and occupy broader climatic niches, giving them a relative advantage over native ants in a warming world. This supports the idea that two of the greatest threats to biodiversity, climate change and biological invasions, will act synergistically, accelerating further biodiversity loss and ecosystem disruption.