Invasion costs, impacts, and human agency: response to Sagoff 2020

Cuthbert, Ross N.; Bacher, Sven; Blackburn, Tim M.; Briski, Elizabeta; Diagne, Christophe; Dick, Jaimie T. A.; Essl, Franz; Genovesi, Piero; Haubrock, Phillip J.; Latombe, Guillaume; Lenzner, Bernd; Meinard, Yves; Pauchard, Aníbal; Pyšek, Petr; Ricciardi, Anthony; Richardson, David M.; Russell, James C.; Simberloff, Daniel; Courchamp, Franck

doi:10.1111/cobi.13592

Cited by 31 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Second, cost data -like other heterogeneous measures explored at global scales, such as biodiversity (e.g., McGill et al, 2014) -are characterized by an extreme heterogeneity in the published literature, be it in terms of spatial scales (e.g., from local agricultural yield loss to countrywide syntheses of costs over multiple socio-economic sectors); temporal scales (from singular costs to multi-decadal impacts); taxonomic coverage (from single species impacts to multi-group syntheses); nature and quality of estimations (from accurate field-based estimations to uncertain extrapolations over time and space); and measure complexity (e.g., types of costs, variety of currencies at different years). This extreme heterogeneity has led to major issues of comparisons between studies as well as opacity over the completeness and precision of cost estimates and extrapolations, which in turn led to repeated criticisms in the past (Bradshaw et al, 2016;Cuthbert et al, 2020;Diagne, Leroy, et al, 2020a;Hoffmann & Broadhurst, 2016). As a consequence, synthesising and comparing costs appeared as an impossible achievement until recently.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing economic costs of invasive alien species with the invacost R package

Leroy

Kramer

Vaissière

et al. 2020

Preprint

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AimLarge-scale datasets are becoming increasingly available for macroecological research from different disciplines. However, learning their specific extraction and analytical requirements can become prohibitively time-consuming for researchers. We argue that this issue can be tackled with the provision of methodological frameworks published in open-source software. We illustrate this solution with the invacost R package, an open-source software designed to query and analyse the global database on reported economic costs of invasive alien species, InvaCost.InnovationsFirst, the invacost package provides updates of this dynamic database directly in the analytical environment R. Second, it helps understand the nature of economic cost data for invasive species, their harmonisation process, and the inherent biases associated with such data. Third, it readily provides complementary methods to query and analyse the costs of invasive species at the global scale, all the while accounting for econometric statistical issues.Main conclusionsThis tool will be useful for scientists working on invasive alien species, by (i) facilitating access and use to this multi-disciplinary data resource and (ii) providing a standard procedure which will facilitate reproducibility and comparability of studies, one of the major critics of this topic until now. We discuss how the development of this R package was designed as an enforcement of general recommendations for transparency, reproducibility and comparability of science in the era of big data in ecology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing economic costs of invasive alien species with the invacost R package

Leroy

Kramer

Vaissière

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…When confronted with a critique of their field, invasion biologists commonly join forces, often the same individuals, and quickly respond with a critical, sometimes harsh, rejoinder (e.g., Richardson et al 2008;Simberloff et al 2011 [141 authors]; Driscoll et al 2015;Cuthbert et al 2020). The practice of scientists banding together to argue against ideas presented by colleagues has been criticized and termed gang science (Warren & Bradford 2013).…”

Section: Let's Welcome a Variety Of Voices To Invasion Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2015; Cuthbert et al. 2020). The practice of scientists banding together to argue against ideas presented by colleagues has been criticized and termed gang science (Warren & Bradford 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

Let's welcome a variety of voices to invasion biology

Davis

2020

Conservation Biology

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“…While economic impacts of a few individual invasive species have been estimated across the entire US (e.g., Martin and Blossey 2013), there are no current, comprehensive estimates of total costs. The most recent estimate of gross economic costs for the United States was $120 billion per year in 2005 (Pimentel et al 2005), but this was criticized for methodological shortcomings, such as extrapolations from unclear baselines and a lack of spatiotemporal granularity (Hoffman and Broadhurst 2016, Cuthbert et al 2020). Extrapolated and uncertain cost estimates are particularly problematic in the context of the US economy, given its size and importance within the global economy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United States

Fantle-Lepczyk

Haubrock

Kramer

et al. 2021

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The United States has thousands of invasive species, representing a sizable, but unknown burden to the national economy. Given the potential economic repercussions of invasive species, quantifying these costs is of paramount importance both for national economies and invasion management. Here, we used a novel global database of invasion costs (InvaCost) to quantify the overall costs of invasive species in the United States across spatiotemporal, taxonomic, and socioeconomic scales. From 1960 to 2020, reported invasion costs totaled $4.52 trillion (USD 2017). Considering only observed, highly reliable costs, this total cost reached $1.22 trillion with an average annual cost of $19.94 billion/year. These costs increased from $2.00 billion annually between 1960-1969 to $21.08 billion annually between 2010-2020. Most costs (73%) were related to resource damages and losses ($896.22 billion), as opposed to management expenditures ($46.54 billion). Moreover, the majority of costs were reported from invaders from terrestrial habitats ($643.51 billion, 53%) and agriculture was the most impacted sector ($509.55 billion). From a taxonomic perspective, mammals ($234.71 billion) and insects ($126.42 billion) were the taxonomic groups responsible for the greatest costs. Considering the apparent rising costs of invasions, coupled with increasing numbers of invasive species and the current lack of cost information for most known invaders, our findings provide critical information for policymakers and managers.

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Invasion costs, impacts, and human agency: response to Sagoff 2020

Abstract: Sagoff claims that because key concepts of invasion science mention the notion of human assistance, "invasion

Cited by 31 publications

References 27 publications

Analysing economic costs of invasive alien species with the invacost R package

Analysing economic costs of invasive alien species with the invacost R package

Let's welcome a variety of voices to invasion biology

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United States

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