Most invasive species largely conserve their climatic niche

Significance There has been a widespread debate whether the ecological niche of species is conserved across space and time. This niche conservatism hypothesis is of high practical relevance for conserving biodiversity. Here, we synthesized empirical evidence on this hypothesis for invasive species to investigate how their climatic niche changes between their native and introduced ranges. Our results supported the hypothesis overall, but we also found important differences among taxa with different characteristics and for different types of data. Our findings are not only relevant for predicting spatial distributions of invasive species in their exotic ranges but also for forecasting species responses to changing environments in the Anthropocene.