Author: Olivia Bates

Click here to check out the recent RTS radio interview (in French), where Jerome discussed his recent paper in PNAS

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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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Congratulations to Jelena Bujan who just published in JAE

The paper shows that accompanied by a thermal niche shift to colder climates, introduced populations of the invasive ant species Tapinoma magnum has an increased acclimation ability to lower temperatures. Such thermal plasticity might explain why invasive populations are able expand into novel niches.

Bujan, J., Charavel, E., Bates, O.K., Gippet, J., Darras, H., Lebas, C. and Bertelsmeier, C., 2020. Increased acclimation ability accompanies a thermal niche shift of a recent invasion. Journal of Animal Ecology.

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Our recent publication by Bates at al., 2020 – see publications and our recent post about it (New Paper) – has been reported in several news sites in Switzerland! Check them out here (in French):

24 heures:https://www.24heures.ch/les-especes-invasives-les-plus-dangereuses-sont-les-plus-casanieres-759600897829
Swissinfohttps://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/les-espèces-invasives-les-plus-dangereuses-sont-les-plus-casanières/46099598
Radio neuchâteloise:https://www.rtn.ch/rtn/Actualite/Suisse/Les-especes-invasives-les-plus-dangereuses-sont-les-plus-casanieres.html
Otherhttps://www.rjb.ch/rjb/Actualite/Suisse/Les-especes-invasives-les-plus-dangereuses-sont-les-plus-casanieres.html
https://www.rfj.ch/rfj/Actualite/Suisse/Les-especes-invasives-les-plus-dangereuses-sont-les-plus-casanieres.html
https://www.bluewin.ch/fr/infos/suisse/des-especes-invasives-mais-casanieres-450031.html
https://www.agirinfo.com/actualites/agrinews/detail/ttnews/les-especes-invasives-les-plus-dangereuses-sont-les-plus-casanieres/

Congratulations to Olivia who has published her first paper, in Nature Communications ! 

The paper investigates whether or not species—when introduced to a new location—eventually become invasive has been linked to the specices’ capacity to expand its niche.  However, the authors show that the extent of niche shift is smaller in non-invasive than invasive ant species, questioning this established hypothesis.