Congratulations to Jérome and Cleo , who have published a paper titled ‘Invasiveness is linked to greater commercial success in the global pet trade’ in PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016337118
The article investigates the link between invasive species and the pet trade. Using an extensive meta-analysis approach, they show how invasive species are overrepresented within the pet trade across major groups of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. However, this does not answer the question of whether ‘pests become pets’ or ‘pets become pests’. Using ANTS as an emergent group of pets, who’s recent rise in popularity is unlikely to have already caused invasions, they found an overrepresentation of invasive ant species in the pool of species treated as pets. This, linked with a link between key traits for invasiveness and popularity as traded pets, indicates that the pet trade not only creates opportunities for invasions, but specifically selects for invasive species. These findings therefore show the need for stricter international regulations in the trade of pets.
This publication has also gained interest by the news, with a recent article being published in Forbes
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