The link between international trade and the global distribution of invasive alien species

By Michael I. Westphal, M. Browne, K. Mackinnon, I. Noble. Biological Invasions, 2008

548 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Invasive alien species (IAS) exact large biodiversity and economic costs and are a significant component of human-induced, global environmental change. Previous studies looking at the variation in alien species across regions have been limited geographically or taxonomically or have not considered economics. We used a global invasive species database to regress IAS per-country on a suite of socioeconomic, ecological, and biogeographical variables. We varied the countries included in the regression tree analyses, in order to explore whether certain outliers were biasing the results, and in most of the cases, merchandise imports was the most important explanatory variable. The greater the degree of international trade, the higher the number of IAS. We also found a positive relationship between species richness and the number of invasives, in accord with other investigations at large spatial scales. Island status (overall), country area, latitude, continental position (New World versus Old World) or other measures of human disturbance (e.g., GDP per capita, population density) were not found to be important determinants of a country’s degree of biological invasion, contrary to previous studies. Our findings also provide support to the idea that more resources for combating IAS should be directed at the introduction stage and that novel trade instruments need to be explored to account for this environmental externality.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ed27d42e3992d6be701ccb6e94f9e8a00fdaf24

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Citations in the corpus

Animal trade and non‐indigenous species introduction: the world‐wide spread of squirrels (2009, background): “Nevertheless, animal trade has increased during the last few decades (Westphal et al., 2008) and squirrels are still being sold as pets everywhere.”
Establishment success of invasive ring‐necked and monk parakeets in Europe (2009, background): “(Westphal et al., 2008), but the actual pattern of introduc-”
Species diversity and drivers of spread of alien fungi (sensu lato) in Europe with a particular focus on France (2009, result): “Our results on fungi are in line with many previous studies showing that globalization, especially international trade, is a major driver of biological invasions across taxa and regions (Dehnen-Schmutz et al. 2007; Kobelt and Nentwig 2008; Westphal et al. 2008).”
Alien forest insects in a warmer world and a globalised economy: impacts of changes in trade, tourism and climate on forest biosecurity. (2010, methodology): “Using the Global Invasive Species Database (GISD) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Westphal et al. (2008) also concluded that the best predictor of the number of invasive alien species in a country is the level of international trade.”
Historical Accumulation of Nonindigenous Forest Pests in the Continental United States (2010, unknown): “Additional introductions occur when species hitchhike on commodities that may or may not include their host plants (Levine and D’Antonio 2003, Work et al. 2005, McCullough et al. 2006, Westphal et al. 2008).”
Coral reef ecology in the Anthropocene (2019, background): “…has caused dramatic changes to the dispersion and diversity of species globally (Banks, Paini, Bayliss, & Hodda, 2014; Meyerson & Mooney, 2007; Westphal, Browne, MacKinnon, & Noble, 2008), with both positive and negative impacts to ecosys - tem services (Charles & Dukes, 2007; Pejchar &…”
Assessing the invasive potential of biofuel species proposed for Florida and the United States using the Australian Weed Risk Assessment. (2011, background): “[39] Westphal MI, Browne M, MacKinnon K, Noble I.”
An analysis of the live reptile and amphibian trade in the USA compared to the global trade in endangered species. (2014, background): “Moreover, in countries that import exotic animals and that have an amenable climate, imported animals can become pests and a danger to the local fauna (e.g., van Wilgen et al., 2008; Westphal et al., 2008; Dove et al., 2011; Measey et al., 2012).”
Unwelcome exchange: International trade as a direct and indirect driver of biological invasions worldwide (2021, background): “tries have found a positive relationship between the current value of merchandise imports (in US$) and the total number of alien plants,(57) fungi,(58) or species listed on the Global Invasive Species Database.(59,60) Such relationships are often nonlinear, suggesting that the effect of imports on a”