Moths and butterflies on alien shores – global biogeography of non-native Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a highly diverse, predominantly herbivorous insect order, with species transported to outside their native range largely facilitated by the global trade of plants and plant-based goods. Analogous to island disharmony, we examine invasion disharmony, where species filtering during invasions increases systematic compositional differences between native and non-native species assemblages, and test whether some families are more successful at establishing in non-native regions than others. We compared numbers of non-native, unintentionally introduced Lepidoptera species with the land area of 11 regions worldwide (Hawaii, North America, Galapagos, Europe, South Africa, South Korea, Japan, Nansei Islands, Ogasawara Islands, Australia, New Zealand). Differences among native and non-native assemblages in the distribution of species among families were investigated using ordination analysis. We tested whether invasion disharmony is explained by propagule pressure (proxied by speci...