Vespa velutina, or Asian yellow-legged hornet, was accidentally introduced from China to other parts of the world: South Korea in 2003, Europe in 2004, and Japan in 2012. V. velutina represents a serious threat to native pollinators. It is known to be a fierce predator of honey bees, but can also hunt wild bees, native wasps, and other flying insects. When V. velutina colonies are developed, many hornets capture foraging bees which are coming back to their hives, causing an increase in homing failure and paralysis of foraging thus leading to colony collapse. The hornets may enter weak beehives to prey on brood and pillage honey. Unlike Apis cerana, Apis mellifera is unable to cope with the predation pressure of V. velutina. Monitoring the spread of an invasive alien species is crucial to plan appropriate management actions and activities to limit the expansion of the species. In addition, an early detection of V. velutina in areas far away from the expansion front allows a rapid response aimed to remove these isolated populations before the settlement of the species. Where V. velutina is now established, control measures to prevent colony losses must be implemented with an integrated pest management approach.

The yellow-legged hornet Vespa velutina Lepeletier, accidentally introduced into France in 2004, is rapidly colonizing other European countries. In Italy the species is spreading throughout the northwest part of the country.Setting up management plans for controlling invasive alien species requires the understanding of the spread modalities and distribution range of the species, information currently not available for the yellow-legged hornet in Italy. Aims of this work are to reconstruct the spread of the yellowlegged hornet from its first arrival in the country, evaluating its distribution range and spread modalities.The area occupied by the species increased from 205 km 2 in 2013 to 930 km 2 in 2015. In 2015 the frontline of the species was at 55 km along the coast from the French border, with a linear spread of 18.3 ± 3.3 km/year. A human-mediated dispersion could be recognized in different occasions. A cluster analysis of the range allowed the identification of 17 core areas used by the species, with a mean nest density of 2.9-3.5 nests/km 2 . These information are fundamental to improve control plans and to establish an early warning and rapid response system for the yellow-legged hornet in Italy, and therefore setup an effective management plan for the species.

The yellow-legged hornet Vespavelutina is an invasive alien species in many areas of the world. In Europe, it is considered a species of Union concern and national authorities have to establish surveillance plans, early warning and rapid response systems or control plans. These strategies customarily require the assessment of the areas that could be colonised beyond outbreaks or expanding ranges, so as to establish efficient containment protocols. The hornet is spreading through a mix of natural diffusion and human-mediated transportation. Despite the latter dispersion mode is hardly predictable, natural diffusion could be modelled from nest data of consecutive years. The aim of this work is to develop a procedure to predict the spread of the yellow-legged hornet in the short term in order to increase the efficiency of control plans to restrain the diffusion of this species. We used data on the mean distances of colonial nests between years to evaluate the probability of yellow-legged hornet dispersal around the areas where the species is present. The distribution of nests in Italy was mainly explained by elevation (95% of nests located within 521 m a.s.l.) and distance from source sites (previous years’ colonies; 95% within 1.4–6.2 km). The diffusion models developed with these two variables forecast, with good accuracy, the spread of the species in the short term: 98–100% of nests were found within the predicted area of expansion. A similar approach can be applied in areas invaded by the yellow-legged hornet, in particular beyond new outbreaks and over the border of its expanding range, to implement strategies for its containment. The spatial application of the models allows the establishment of buffer areas where monitoring and control efforts can be allocated on the basis of the likelihood of the species spreading at progressively greater distances.

Vespa velutina is an invasive hornet that is colonising several countries worldwide, with detrimental effects on multiple components but primarily affecting honey bees and native insect species. Traps for wasps and hornets are commonly used for trapping V. velutina, both for monitoring and control purposes. In this study, we compared the performances of two typologies of traps and baits widely used for trapping this invasive hornet, by evaluating their effectiveness and selectiveness in trapping V. velutina in two sites during two different periods of the year, spring and autumn. The performance of the traps changed in relation to (i) the trap’s model, (ii) the bait’s typology and (iii) the period of the year. In spring, traps with common beer as bait were more effective and more selective independently of trap’s model than the commercial bait that has been tested. On the contrary, in autumn, just one combination of trap and attractant (the commercial trap and bait) achieved higher effectiveness and selectiveness. Despite the underlined variations among traps and baits, overall catches of V. velutina were scanty compared to bycatches of non-target insects, since best performing traps either in term of effectiveness and selectiveness caught 3.65% of the target species in spring and 1.35% in autumn upon the total trapped insects. This highlights the urgent necessity of developing more selective trapping methods for monitoring and particularly for controlling purposes.

The Asian yellow-legged hornet Vespa velutina is an invasive alien species introduced and widespread in several countries of Europe and Asia. Its diffusion generates relevant environmental and socio-economic impacts. Environmental impacts include threats to the native insect biodiversity and the pollination ecosystem services. Socio-economic impacts include threats to the apiculture sector, economic consequences for the adoption of management strategies, social concern and health issues. Different options were developed and adopted for (i) preventing the introduction of V. velutina , (ii) early detecting its presence, (iii) eradicating populations at the initial stage of invasion or (iv) controlling populations for limiting and mitigating its impacts. The aim of this review was to provide an updated overview about the distribution, impacts and options for managing V. velutina populations, through a literature review of the published academic documents. Moreover, this study highlights that some topics received little attention (impacts of V. velutina on the biodiversity, on the pollination ecosystem services, on the economy) or require further research efforts (effective control methods for V. velutina ); therefore, future research should be directed towards filling these gaps of knowledge.

An innovative scanning harmonic radar has been recently developed for tracking insects in complex landscapes. This movable technology has been tested on an invasive hornet species (Vespa velutina) for detecting the position of their nests in the environment, in the framework of an early detection strategy. The new model of harmonic radar proved to be effective in tracking hornets either in open landscapes, hilly environments and areas characterised by the presence of more obstacles, such as woodlands and urban areas. Hornets were effectively tracked in complex landscapes for a mean tracking length of 96 ± 62 m with maximum values of ~ 300 m. The effectiveness of locating nests was 75% in new invasive outbreaks and 60% in highly density colonised areas. Furthermore, this technology could provide information on several aspects of insect’s ecology and biology. In this case, new insights were obtained about the mean foraging range of V. velutina (395 ± 208 m with a maximum value of 786 m) and flying features (ground speed), which was 6.66 ± 2.31 m s−1 for foraging individuals (hornets that are not carrying prey’s pellet) and 4.06 ± 1.34 m s−1 for homing individuals.

Communication plans are fundamental for the success of conservation programs, especially when dealing with alien species. In a media-saturated society the effectiveness of communication could be evaluated through the information reported by the media, as an indicator of public attitudes towards a particular issue. We evaluated the effectiveness of a communication campaign by analysing the perception of the media towards management activities to control grey squirrel populations. A media content analysis was performed to classify the news in categories regarding their attitude towards the project. A total of 166 articles were analysed, which corresponds to a mean of one article every nine days along the four-years project. News followed peaks of interest in specific periods, generally related with milestones of the project. Half of the negative news regarded management activities in an urban area, despite the softer management approach adopted, with surgical sterilization of animals instead of their euthanasia after live-trapping. A reinforcement of the communication focused in Liguria inverted the trend of negative news which decreased over time, indicating the effectiveness of communication activities. Public support is fundamental for the successful implementation of eradication and control plans. Considering the role of media in informing and driving public opinion, media monitoring is routinely included in the development of management projects. We suggest that a media content analysis can be used as a performance indicator to evaluate the communication effectiveness of conservation projects, helping to identify negative trends so to proactively react.

Citizen science initiatives have been increasingly used by researchers as a source of occurrence data to model the distribution of alien species. Since citizen science presence‐only data suffer from some fundamental issues, efforts have been made to combine these data with those provided by scientifically structured surveys. Surprisingly, only a few studies proposing data integration evaluated the contribution of this process to the effective sampling of species' environmental niches and, consequently, its effect on model predictions on new time intervals. We relied on niche overlap analyses, machine learning classification algorithms and ecological niche models to compare the ability of data from citizen science and scientific surveys, along with their integration, in capturing the realized niche of 13 invasive alien species in Italy. Moreover, we assessed differences in current and future invasion risk predicted by each data set under multiple global change scenarios. We showed that data from citizen science and scientific surveys captured similar species niches though highlighting exclusive portions associated with clearly identifiable environmental conditions. In terrestrial species, citizen science data granted the highest gain in environmental space to the pooled niches, determining an increased future biological invasion risk. A few aquatic species modelled at the regional scale reported a net loss in the pooled niches compared to their scientific survey niches, suggesting that citizen science data may also lead to contraction in pooled niches. For these species, models predicted a lower future biological invasion risk. These findings indicate that citizen science data may represent a valuable contribution to predicting future spread of invasive alien species, especially within national‐scale programmes. At the same time, citizen science data collected on species poorly known to citizen scientists, or in strictly local contexts, may strongly affect the niche quantification of these taxa and the prediction of their future biological invasion risk.