What Will the Future Bring for Biological Invasions on Islands? An Expert-Based Assessment

Lenzner, Bernd; Latombe, Guillaume; Capinha, César; Bellard, Céline; Courchamp, Franck; Diagne, Christophe; Dullinger, Stefan; Golivets, Marina; Irl, Severin D. H.; Kühn, Ingolf; Leung, Brian; Liu, Chunlong; Moser, Dietmar; Roura‐Pascual, Núria; Seebens, Hanno; Turbelin, Anna J.; Weigelt, Patrick; Essl, Franz

doi:10.3389/fevo.2020.00280

Cited by 41 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 104 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Although economic and environmental factors are often considered important and are well-understood, we show that societal, technological and especially political factors are also essential for obtaining a comprehensive perspective on spatial and temporal changes in biological invasions. As expected from other studies (10, 14, 25–28), Trade was consistently the best predictor of EAS richness in one-predictor models, whereas the combination of Trade and Governance as main effects best explained EAS richness for most taxa in two-predictor models. These two predictors capture different aspects of biological invasions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…Understanding how socio-ecological predictors together shape the current and future state of biological invasions at the country scale is crucial to design and implement efficient policies and future global scenarios for biological invasions (11, 17). Recent global studies considering the combined role of social, political, environmental and socio-economic predictors for the future of biological invasions have mostly relied on expert knowledge (10, 25). Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive quantitative assessment of these relationships.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Capacity of countries to reduce biological invasions

Latombe¹,

Seebens

Lenzner³

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The extent and impacts of biological invasions on biodiversity are largely shaped by an array of socio-ecological predictors, which exhibit high variation among countries. Yet a global synthetic perspective of how these factors vary across countries is currently lacking. Here, we investigate how a set of five socio-ecological predictors (Governance, Trade, Environmental Performance, Lifestyle and Education, Innovation) explain i) country-level established alien species (EAS) richness of eight taxonomic groups, and ii) country capacity to prevent and manage biological invasions and their impacts. Trade and Governance together best predicted the average EAS richness, increasing variance explained by up to 54% compared to models based on climatic and spatial variables only. Country-level EAS richness increased strongly with Trade, whereas high level of Governance resulted in lower EAS richness. Historical (1996) levels of Governance and Trade better explained response variables than current (2015) levels. Thus, our results reveal a historical legacy of these two predictors with profound implications for the future of biological invasions. We therefore used Governance and Trade to define a two-dimensional socio-economic space in which the position of a country captures its capacity to address issues of biological invasions. Our results provide novel insights into the complex relationship between socio-ecological predictors and biological invasions. Further, we highlight the need for designing better policies and management measures for alien species, and for integrating biological invasions in global environmental scenarios.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capacity of countries to reduce biological invasions

Latombe¹,

Seebens

Lenzner³

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This acceleration will lead to larger differences in numbers of alien species between islands and mainland regions in the future. Nevertheless, islands should still be viewed as being particularly vulnerable to the introduction of alien species (Russell, Meyer, Holmes, & Pagad, 2017), with major drivers in the future being trade, transport, tourism, land‐use changes and climate change (Lenzner et al., 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting the continental accumulation of alien species through to 2050

Seebens

Bacher

Blackburn

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

Self Cite

458

317

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Biological invasions have steadily increased over recent centuries. However, we still lack a clear expectation about future trends in alien species numbers. In particular, we do not know whether alien species will continue to accumulate in regional floras and faunas, or whether the pace of accumulation will decrease due to the depletion of native source pools. Here, we apply a new model to simulate future numbers of alien species based on estimated sizes of source pools and dynamics of historical invasions, assuming a continuation of processes in the future as observed in the past (a business‐as‐usual scenario). We first validated performance of different model versions by conducting a back‐casting approach, therefore fitting the model to alien species numbers until 1950 and validating predictions on trends from 1950 to 2005. In a second step, we selected the best performing model that provided the most robust predictions to project trajectories of alien species numbers until 2050. Altogether, this resulted in 3,790 stochastic simulation runs for 38 taxon–continent combinations. We provide the first quantitative projections of future trajectories of alien species numbers for seven major taxonomic groups in eight continents, accounting for variation in sampling intensity and uncertainty in projections. Overall, established alien species numbers per continent were predicted to increase from 2005 to 2050 by 36%. Particularly, strong increases were projected for Europe in absolute (+2,543 ± 237 alien species) and relative terms, followed by Temperate Asia (+1,597 ± 197), Northern America (1,484 ± 74) and Southern America (1,391 ± 258). Among individual taxonomic groups, especially strong increases were projected for invertebrates globally. Declining (but still positive) rates were projected only for Australasia. Our projections provide a first baseline for the assessment of future developments of biological invasions, which will help to inform policies to contain the spread of alien species.

show abstract

“…In insular ecosystems, biological invasions represent the major threat to biodiversity conservation (Simberloff 1995;Wilcove et al 1998;Lenzner et al 2020;Py sek et al 2020). Reunion Island, a French oceanic island, is recognised with the Malagasy region as a biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al 2000) but faces many threats, including impacts due to plant invasions (Macdonald et al 1991).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying invasion degree by alien plants species in Reunion Island

Fenouillas

Ah‐Peng

Bracco³

et al. 2021

Austral Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The largest area of intact vegetation in the Mascarene's archipelago is found on Reunion Island, but the remaining natural areas are under threats. Biological invasions are one of the main threats to biodiversity loss on this island and globally worldwide. This study aimed to quantify invasion degree by alien plants species in Reunion Island. This work was possible thanks to a large partnership between researchers and managers. All existing spatial data on invasion pattern were combined and completed by expert knowledge to develop the first 250 x 250 m map of invasion degree at the island scale. To fill the gaps where no field survey data or expert knowledge was available, we used a Random Forest model using nine climatic, landscape and anthropogenic variables. This model also provides a preliminary assessment of drivers of invasion at Reunion Island. Results showed that 85% of the extant native vegetation was invaded in different proportions; 38% are slightly invaded, 26% moderately invaded and 22% very heavily invaded. Despite the high levels of invasion in some places, more than 50% of the extant vegetation is not invaded or slightly invaded. Most of the invaded areas are located in the lowland and in the leeward coast although alien plants invade all types of vegetation from the coast to the top of the island. These results highlight a clear increase in the distribution of alien species over time. This study constitutes a key first step for about the ongoing prioritisation of management interventions on Reunion Island.

show abstract

What Will the Future Bring for Biological Invasions on Islands? An Expert-Based Assessment

Cited by 41 publications

References 104 publications

Capacity of countries to reduce biological invasions

Capacity of countries to reduce biological invasions

Projecting the continental accumulation of alien species through to 2050

Quantifying invasion degree by alien plants species in Reunion Island

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About