An Argentine Scientist Visited the EVA4.0 team to Analyze the Global Pattern of Historical Bark and Ambrosia Beetle Invasions
Maria Victoria Lantschner, an Argentine scientist from Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, visited EVA 4.0 team at CZU to analyze the global patterns of historical bark and ambrosia beetle (Coleoptera: Scolytine) invasions.
Biological invasions are affected by biological features of invading species, strength of pathway connectivity among world regions and habitat characteristics of invaded regions. These factors may interact in complex ways to drive geographical variation in numbers of invasions among world regions. Understanding the role of these drivers of invasions provides information that is crucial to the development of effective biosecurity policies.
- In this study we assemble for the first time a global database of historical invasions of bark and ambrosia beetles and explore factors explaining geographical variation in numbers of species invading different world regions.
- We found that bark beetles and ambrosia beetles exhibited similar global invasion patterns. The size of source species pools offered little power in explaining variation in numbers of invasions among world regions nor did climate or forest area.
- In contrast, cumulative trade had a strong and consistent positive relationship with numbers of Scolytine species moving from one region to another. We thus conclude that global variation in bark and ambrosia beetles is primarily driven by variation in trade levels among world regions.
- Our results stress the importance of global trade as the primary driver of historical Scolytinae invasions and we anticipate other hitchhiking species would exhibit similar patterns.