Climate Change Enhances the Success of Marine Invasive Species.

Climate change and invasive species both independently threaten marine biodiversity but can also interact. Invasive species often possess traits that not only promote their success in novel environments but may also confer resilience to climate-driven ocean change, allowing them to respond favorably to a changing climate. Here, drawing on 67 studies across 30 non-native species, we present moderate but consistent evidence that climate change enhances invasion success-particularly through increased abundance and establishment-across multiple temporal scales and ocean regions, while recognizing taxonomic and geographic biases in the available data. Even after accounting for moderators, unexplained heterogeneity remained among studies, suggesting strong context dependency in the effects of climate change on invasion success. Warming and extreme events emerged as key drivers of invasion success. We also identify ocean hotspots for invasions globally, with the cold and warm temperate Northwest Pacific emerging as major donor regions, and the Mediterranean Sea and Northern European Seas as primary recipient regions. Our study suggests that in the future, invasive species are likely to pose a greater threat to ocean biodiversity than previously thought, underscoring the urgent need for institutional capacity building, broader surveillance, predictive modelling, and adaptive management strategies across global marine ecosystems.