Central to the problem of biological invasions, human activities introduce species beyond their native ranges and participate in their subsequent spread. Understanding human-mediated dispersal is therefore crucial for both predicting and preventing invasions. Here, we show that decomposing human-mediated dispersal into three temporal phases: departure, transport and arrival, allows to understand how the characteristics of human activities and the biological traits of species influence each phase of the dispersal process, and ultimately govern invasion pathways in insects. Integrating these precise mechanisms into future invasion models should increase their realism and generalization for any potential insect invader. Moreover, understanding these mechanisms can provide insight into why some invasive insects are more widely distributed than others, and to estimate risks posed by species that have not yet been introduced.

Department of Ecology and Evolution University of Lausanne 1015 Lausanne Switzerland

US Forest Service Northern Research Station Morgantown WV 26505 USA; Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences Praha 6 Suchdol CZ 165 21 Czech Republic

References provided by Crossref.org

Pathways for accidental biocontrol: The human-mediated dispersal of insect predators and parasitoids

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