Risk of introduction and establishment of alien vertebrate species in transboundary neighboring areas

Abstract

Cross-border neighboring areas could be particularly vulnerable to biological invasions due to short geographic distances and frequent interactions, although the invasion risk remains unevaluated worldwide. Here, based on global datasets of distributions of established alien vertebrates as well as vectors of introduction and establishment, we show that more than one-third of the world’s transboundary neighboring areas are facing high invasion risk of alien vertebrates, especially in Europe, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The most important predictors of high introduction and establishment risk are bilateral trade, habitat disturbance and the richness of established alien vertebrates. Interestingly, we found that border fences may have limited effects in reducing the risk, as only 7.9% of border fences spatially overlap with hotspots of biological invasion even in the Eurasia areas (13.7% overlap) where physical border barriers are mainly located. We therefore recommend the implementation of immediate and proactive prevention and control measures to cope with cross-border invasions in response to continued globalization.