Category: News

Invasion disharmony in the global biogeography of native and non‐native beetle species

Liebhold, A. M., Turner, R. M., Blake, R. E., Bertelsmeier, C., Brockerhoff, E. G., Nahrung, H. F., Pureswaran, D. S., Roques, A., Seebens, H., & Yamanaka, T. (2021).  Diversity and Distributions, ddi.13381. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13381

The concept of “island disharmony” has been widely applied to describe the systematic over- and under-representation of taxa on islands compared to mainland regions. Here, we explore an extension of that concept to biological invasions. We compare biogeographical patterns in native and non-native beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages from around the world to test whether beetle invasions represent a random sample of species or whether some families are more prone to invade than others.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ddi.13381

Thanks to a fruitful collaboration with several international researchers, we have published new research on

“Worldwide border interceptions provide a window into human-mediated global insect movement”

https://europepmc.org/article/med/34255404:

As part of national biosecurity programs, cargo imports, passenger baggage and international mail are inspected at ports of entry to verify compliance with phytosanitary regulations and to directly intercept potentially damaging non-native species to prevent their introduction. Detection of organisms during inspections may also provide crucial information about the species composition and relative arrival rates in invasion pathways that can inform the implementation of other biosecurity practices such as quarantines and surveillance. In most regions, insects are the main taxonomic group encountered during inspections. We gathered insect interception data from nine world regions collected from 1995 – 2019 to compare the composition of species arriving at ports in these regions. Collectively, 8,716 insect species were intercepted in these regions over the last 25 years, with the combined international dataset comprising 1,899,573 interception events, of which 863,972 were identified to species level. Rarefaction analysis indicated that interceptions comprise only a small fraction of species present in invasion pathways. Despite differences in inspection methodologies, as well as differences in the composition of import source regions and imported commodities, we found strong positive correlations in species interception frequencies between regions, particularly within the Hemiptera and Thysanoptera. There were also significant differences in species frequencies among insects intercepted in different regions. Nevertheless, integrating interception data among multiple regions would be valuable for estimating invasion risks for insect species with high likelihoods of introduction as well as for identifying rare but potentially damaging species.

Lucie Aulus has joined the team as a postdoc. She will work on invasion biogeography at a global scale.

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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