The world’s 100 worst invasive alien insect species

While there has been great interest in species characteristics that promote invasiveness, still little is known about the characteristics that distinguish invasive from non-invasive insects. Using a database on the naturalized distributions of alien insects and expert opinions about their impacts, we identified the world’s 100 worst invasive insect species.
By comparing species characteristics reported in the literature using a meta-analysis, between the 100 worst invasive species and related non-invasive species, we found that invasive insects overall have more pathways of introduction, occur in more habitats, have higher fecundities, higher voltinism, more genes, shorted lifespans and faster development from egg to adult. Some of the differences in species characteristics are related to propagule pressures, life-histories and biotic interactions, conditional on whether the non-invasive species compared is known to be naturalized somewhere, whether the invasive species is globally dis..., ,