Invading extreme environments: status of the invasion of the European hare Lepus europaeus in the Atacama Desert and the Andean highlands of the Southern Cone of South America

The European hare Lepus europaeus has been widely distributed throughout the Southern Cone of South America. This geographical area contains extreme climatic environments, which are part of the South American Arid Diagonal. One is the Atacama Desert, known for its extreme aridity, and the other is the Altiplano Plateau, which rises 3700 m.a.s.l. These environments impose serious restrictions on the biota. After intensive sampling in these environments, we concluded that the invasion of this leporid is in a process of geographical expansion. On a macro scale, the presence of hares was correlated with the elevation, mean annual temperature, precipitation in the driest quarter of the year and temperature seasonality. On a local scale, their presence was associated positively with a topographic diversity index and agricultural zones (presence of irrigation canals). High-altitude environments have served as a propagation route for the hare, which has used valleys that descend the western Andean slope to the Pacific Ocean to invade areas in the Atacama Desert, both in Chile and Peru.