A Proposed Coupling Framework of Biological Invasions: Quantifying the Management Prioritization in Mealybugs Invasion

Abstract

Prioritizing potential invasive alien species, introduction pathways, and likely places susceptible to biological invasions is collectively critical for developing the targeting of management strategies at pre-border, border, and post-border. A framework for prioritizing the invasion management that considered all these elements in combination is lacking, particularly in the context of potential coinvasion scenarios of multispecies. Here, for the first time, we have constructed a coupling framework of biological invasions to evaluate and prioritize multiple invasion risks of 35 invasive alien mealybugs (IAMs) that posed a significant threat to the agri-horticultural crops in China. We found that the imported tropical fruits from free trade areas of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to entry ports of southern China were the primary introduction pathway for IAMs, vectored on various fruit commodities. There was also a high probability for cointroductions of potential multi-IAMs with a single imported tropical fruit. The potential distribution of such IAMs with dissimilar net relatedness were mainly located in southern China. These distributions, however, are likely to expand to the higher latitudes of northern China under future climate and land use/land cover changes. Temperature and anthropogenic factors were both independently and collectively determining factors for the diversity and distribution patterns of imported IAMs under near-current climate conditions. Our findings highlight that these multiple components of global change have and will continue to facilitate the introduction and establishment risks of IAMs in southern China, as well as the spread risk into northern China. Additionally, our findings, for the first time, demonstrated management prioritization across the continuous invasion stages of 35 IAMs in China, and provide additional insights into the development of targeting of their biosecurity and management decisions.