Biological invasions in France: Alarming costs and even more alarming knowledge gaps

David Renault,Franck Courchamp,Boris Leroy,Elena Angulo,Liliana Ballesteros-Mejia,Christophe Diagne,Eléna Manfrini

doi:10.3897/neobiota.67.59134

Abstract

The ever-increasing number of introduced species profoundly threatens global biodiversity. While the ecological and evolutionary consequences of invasive alien species are receiving increasing attention, their economic impacts have largely remained understudied, especially in France. Here, we aimed at providing a general overview of the monetary losses (damages caused by) and expenditures (management of) associated with invasive alien species in France. This country has a long history of alien species presence, partly due to its long-standing global trade activities, highly developed tourism, and presence of overseas territories in different regions of the globe, resulting in a conservative minimum of 2,750 introduced and invasive alien species. By synthesizing for the first time the monetary losses and expenditures incurred by invasive alien species in Metropolitan France and French overseas territories, we obtained 1,583 cost records for 98 invasive alien species. We found that they caused a conservative total amount ranging between US$ 1,280 million and 11,535 million in costs over the period 1993–2018. We extrapolated costs for species invading France, for which costs were reported in other countries but not in France, which yielded an additional cost ranging from US$ 151 to 3,030 millions. Damage costs were nearly eight times higher than management expenditure. Insects, and in particular the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus and the yellow fever mosquito Ae. aegypti, totalled very high economic costs, followed by non-graminoid terrestrial flowering and aquatic plants (Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Ludwigia sp. and Lagarosiphon major). Over 90% of alien species currently recorded in France had no costs reported in the literature, resulting in high biases in taxonomic, regional and activity sector coverages. To conclude, we report alarming costs and even more alarming knowledge gaps. Our results should raise awareness of the importance of biosecurity and biosurveillance in France, and beyond, as well as the crucial need for better reporting and documentation of cost data.

Highlights

Biological invasions, alongside climate change, pollution, habitats destruction and overexploitation, are direct drivers of change and loss in biodiversity (Bellard et al 2012; Elbakidze et al 2018; Hughes et al 2020; Liu et al 2020; Verma et al 2020)
As cost entries were obtained from different years and currencies, all costs were standardised to a unique and common currency, i.e. 2017 equivalent US dollars (US$) using official market exchange rates and taking into account the inflation since the year of cost estimation
We provide a coarse approximation of the potential costs of invasive alien species known to occur in France, but without cost data for France in InvaCost version 3.0, with a two-step extrapolation procedure based on available data

Summary

Introduction

Biological invasions, alongside climate change, pollution, habitats destruction and overexploitation, are direct drivers of change and loss in biodiversity (Bellard et al 2012; Elbakidze et al 2018; Hughes et al 2020; Liu et al 2020; Verma et al 2020). The impacts of invasive alien species on biodiversity may profoundly alter the functioning of communities and ecosystems (Braun et al 2019; Papier et al 2019), in turn altering the delivery of ecosystem services (Castro-Diez et al 2016), biodiversity and human health (Elbakidze et al 2018; Shackleton et al 2019; Kumar Rai and Singh 2020; Pyšek et al 2020) When expanding their range, several invasive alien species can act as ecosystem engineers, gradually transforming invaded communities and existing ecological structures (Guy-Haim et al 2017; Lebouvier et al 2020)

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