New Zealand faces significant ecological problems caused by the introduction of a variety of invasive small mammal species. Many of these species originate from temperate to subarctic climates and occur across wide elevations in their native range, and so arrived predisposed to adapt to a variety of habitats and bioclimatic zones in their new environs, including the alpine zone. Almost all of New Zealand’s invasive small mammal species have been recorded in the country’s alpine zones, yet neither the altitudinal distribution nor the extent to which such species use high elevation areas has been clearly defined. We conducted extensive camera trap surveys in summer to autumn periods of 2019 and 2020 across an elevation range of 500–2250 m above sea level, and used detection rates and occupancy modelling to reveal the altitudinal distributions and habitat associations of all 10 invasive small mammals that occur in the dryland zone of the central South Island. We found altitudinal distributions varied greatly across species, and that while most exhibited decreasing detection rates and site occupancy probabilities with increasing elevation, some used the subalpine and alpine zones to a greater degree than adjacent lower elevations. There were clear habitat associations, as well as interspecific associations that helped to explain the altitudinal distribution of some species. Understanding how such factors influence the distribution of invasive small mammals has both broad implications for invasive species management, and direct applications in evaluating threats to native taxa, advancing management strategies, and benchmarking distributions in a changing climate.

新西兰面临着由于引入各种侵入性小型哺乳动物物种而引起的重大生态问题。这些物种中的许多物种起源于温带气候至亚北极气候，并发生在其本国范围的广泛海拔上，因此，这些物种易于适应新环境（包括高山带）中的各种生境和生物气候带。新西兰几乎所有的侵入性小型哺乳动物物种都记录在该国的高山地带，但尚未明确定义这些物种的海拔分布或使用高海拔地区的程度。我们在2019年和2020年的夏季至秋季对海拔500–2250 m的海拔范围进行了广泛的相机陷阱调查，并使用检出率和占用模型来揭示发生在南岛中部干旱地区的所有10种侵入性小型哺乳动物的海拔分布和栖息地关联。我们发现不同物种间的海拔高度分布差异很大，尽管大多数海拔高度升高时发现率和站点占用率下降，但某些地区比邻近的较低海拔更高地使用了高山和高山地区。有明确的栖息地关联以及种间关联有助于解释某些物种的海拔分布。理解这些因素如何影响侵入性小哺乳动物的分布，不仅对侵入物种的管理具有广泛的意义，而且在评估对本地分类单元的威胁方面具有直接的应用，