Abstract
Biological invasions are occurring frequently and with great impact to agricultural production and other ecosystem services. In response to this, the Australian Weed Risk Assessment (AWRA) was created to assess the potential ‘weediness’ of plants based on answers to questions related to biogeography, undesirable attributes, and biology or ecology. This basic model has been expanded and adapted for use on other taxa, often without adequate validation. Since invasive insect crop pests are a major economic cost to agricultural production, there is interest in using an expanded model for insects. Here, we review traits related to invasiveness of insects based on a systematic review of the literature. We then compare the identified invasive traits of insects with those identified for plants in the AWRA. Using insects as a case study, we illustrate that although there is some overlap in invasive traits, there are many unique traits related to invasion for both insects and plants. For insects, these traits relate largely to social behaviour. This lack of congruence may also be the case for other taxa. To increase predictive power, a taxon-specific risk assessment tool and deliberate verification are required.
Highlights
It is widely accepted that invasive species are a major cause of global biodiversity loss, and as such, public interest in the topic has increased over recent decades (Didham et al 2005)
Our systematic review of the invasion literature demonstrates that there are a number of differences in the traits that are claimed to be important for invasion in plants and insects
Using insects as a case study, we have illustrated that expanding a pest risk assessment scheme originally developed for plants may not appropriately capture the potential for invasiveness in other taxa because there are likely to be key differences in both the traits related to invasive behaviour and the importance of these traits
Summary
It is widely accepted that invasive species are a major cause of global biodiversity loss, and as such, public interest in the topic has increased over recent decades (Didham et al 2005). Invasive species are defined in a number of ways with a variety of terms (Lockwood et al 2013), often they are associated with ‘harm’ to the newly invaded environment (Mack et al 2000). 95% of these arthropod introductions are accidental through entrance on plants, soil, ship ballast water, food sources, wood, etc (Pimentel et al 2005, Rabitsch 2010) These crop pest introductions are estimated to cause US$13.5 billion dollars in damage annually in the United States due to crop loss and additional pesticide use (Pimentel et al 2005). Species invasion is a global problem affecting a range of economically important services
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