Challenging the status quo in invasive species assessment using mechanistic physiologically based demographic modeling

Abstract

The increased incidence of invasive species introductions is a hallmark of global change, but their associated environmental and economic impacts are vastly underestimated. Assessing and managing the impact of invasive species requires understanding their weather driven dynamics as a basis for predicting their potential geographic distribution and relative abundance. Current de-facto standards for invasive species assessment are correlative approaches lacking mechanistic underpinnings, and hence fail to capture the weather driven biology limiting their explanatory and predictive capacity to forewarn policy makers of species invasiveness (i.e., its potential geographic distribution and relative abundance under extant and/or climate change weather). The idiosyncratic time-place nature of biological invasions and the inability of correlative approaches to incorporate biological information call for development of a unifying prospective approach across species. Physiologically based demographic models (PBDMs) provide a holistic basis for assessment of invasive species addressing many limitations of correlative approaches while accommodating higher level of biological complexity using a similar number of parameters. We use the South American tomato pinworm Tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) as a case study in the Palearctic and compare the predictions of our PBDM model to those of three analyses based on the correlative CLIMEX model. The PBDM outperformed CLIMEX with comparable CLIMEX predictions only after the pest had reached its potential geographic distribution (i.e., post hoc), using 6–10 vs. 13 parameters, respectively. We suggest creating dedicated laboratories to gather appropriate biological data and developing generalized software to build mechanistic models for assessing invasive species of any taxa.

Investigating the effects of species niche shifts on the potential distribution of Tuta absoluta (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae) by using global occurrence data

“…Consistent with others’ research, under the NDH framework, we also found evidence of a niche shift of T. absoluta in Africa, possibly due to the fact that n -dimensions contain more information about environmental variables ( Pili et al 2020 , Marchioro and Krechemer 2023 ). The climate niche of invasive species changes over time, and Marchioro and Krechemer (2023) showed that T. absoluta initially entered a suitable environment that is highly similar to the native species, and then the spreaders with the best dispersal and growth capacity entered and adapted to the new environment ( Shine et al 2011 , Colautti and Barrett 2013 , Ponti et al 2021 , Ponti and Gutierrez 2023 ). T. absoluta in temperate areas has lower and higher thermal thresholds (lower temperature threshold = 5.37 °C and higher temperature threshold = 35.69 °C) than South American populations (lower temperature threshold = 7.38 °C and higher temperature threshold = 33.82 °C) ( Campos et al 2020 ).…”

“…Since T. absoluta was detected for the first time outside its native range in Spain in 2006, some scholars have predicted its potential distribution ( Tonnang et al 2015 , Han et al 2018 , Santana et al 2018 , Ponti et al 2021 , Ponti and Gutierrez 2023 ). Santana et al (2018) used the CLIMEX model to make better predictions for the Euro-Mediterranean region than Han et al (2018) , because the distribution data used by Santana et al came from the larger Palearctic region ( Ponti and Gutierrez 2023 ). Ponti et al (2021) provided good predictions for Europe and North America using physiologically based demographic models (PBDMS), which do not rely on specific distribution data and can be transferred to different regions and times.…”