Massive yet grossly underestimated global costs of invasive insects

Insects have presented human society with some of its greatest development challenges by spreading diseases, consuming crops and damaging infrastructure. Despite the massive human and financial toll of invasive insects, cost estimates of their impacts remain sporadic, spatially incomplete and of questionable quality. Here we compile a comprehensive database of economic costs of invasive insects. Taking all reported goods and service estimates, invasive insects cost a minimum of US$70.0 billion per year globally, while associated health costs exceed US$6.9 billion per year. Total costs rise as the number of estimate increases, although many of the worst costs have already been estimated (especially those related to human health). A lack of dedicated studies, especially for reproducible goods and service estimates, implies gross underestimation of global costs. Global warming as a consequence of climate change, rising human population densities and intensifying international trade will allow these costly insects to spread into new areas, but substantial savings could be achieved by increasing surveillance, containment and public awareness.

[1]  Andrew M. Liebhold,et al.  Economic Impacts of Invasive Species in Forests , 2009, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[2]  P. MacIntyre.  An evaluation of the costs of pest wasps ( Vespula species ) in , 2015 .

[3]  L. Rodriguez,et al.  Can Invasive Species Facilitate Native Species? Evidence of How, When, and Why These Impacts Occur , 2006, Biological Invasions.

[4]  A. Sanguinetti,et al.  Invasive bees promote high reproductive success in Andean orchids , 2014 .

[5]  L. P. Lounibos,et al.  Ecology of invasive mosquitoes: effects on resident species and on human health. , 2005, Ecology letters.

[6]  Wolfgang Nentwig,et al.  Disentangling the role of environmental and human pressures on biological invasions across Europe , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[7]  N. Su.  Novel technologies for subterranean termite control , 2002 .

[8]  J. Boyd,et al.  What are Ecosystem Services? The Need for Standardized Environmental Accounting Units , 2006 .

[9]  J. Spangenberg,et al.  Precisely incorrect? Monetising the value of ecosystem services § , 2010 .

[10]  Robert G. Haight,et al.  Economic Impacts of Non-Native Forest Insects in the Continental United States , 2011, PloS one.

[11]  I. Guarniero.  How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? (PLOS Biology) , 2014 .

[12]  C. Murray,et al.  Household catastrophic health expenditure: a multicountry analysis , 2003, The Lancet.

[13]  E. Oerke.  Crop losses to pests , 2005, The Journal of Agricultural Science.

[14]  O. Zyryanova,et al.  Ecological Studies , 1911, Nature.

[15]  Santanu Roy,et al.  The Economics of Controlling a Stochastic Biological Invasion , 2002 .

[16]  David R. Anderson,et al.  Understanding AIC and BIC in Model Selection , 2004 .

[17]  P. Mellor,et al.  Culicoides biting midges: their role as arbovirus vectors. , 2000, Annual review of entomology.

[18]  L. P. Lounibos,et al.  Ecology of invasive mosquitoes: effects on resident species and on human health: Invasive mosquitoes , 2005 .

[19]  David R. Anderson,et al.  Model selection and multimodel inference : a practical information-theoretic approach , 2003 .

[20]  Daisie,et al.  Handbook of alien species in Europe , 2009 .

[21]  J. Bergh,et al.  Economic valuation of biodiversity: sense or nonsense? , 2001 .

[22]  J. Jeschke,et al.  A spatial mismatch between invader impacts and research publications , 2016, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[23]  P. Schlagenhauf,et al.  Cost-effectiveness analysis of malaria chemoprophylaxis for travellers to West-Africa , 2010, BMC infectious diseases.

[24]  W. Thuiller,et al.  Will climate change promote future invasions? , 2013, Global change biology.

[25]  M. Vilà,et al.  How well do we understand the impacts of alien species on ecosystem services? A pan-European, cross-taxa assessment , 2010 .

[26]  H. MacIsaac,et al.  Characterised and Projected Costs of Nonindigenous Species in Canada , 2006, Biological Invasions.

[27]  William A Link,et al.  Model weights and the foundations of multimodel inference. , 2006, Ecology.

[28]  J. Lamarque,et al.  Global Biodiversity: Indicators of Recent Declines , 2010, Science.

[29]  L. Harder,et al.  When mutualism goes bad: density‐dependent impacts of introduced bees on plant reproduction , 2014 .

[30]  L. F. Chaves,et al.  Unforeseen Costs of Cutting Mosquito Surveillance Budgets , 2010, PLoS neglected tropical diseases.

[31]  Marc Kenis,et al.  Ecological effects of invasive alien insects , 2008, Biological Invasions.

[32]  O. Olfert,et al.  Insect invasions of agroecosystems in the western Canadian prairies: case histories, patterns, and implications for ecosystem function , 2011, Biological Invasions.

[33]  D. Gubler,et al.  Resurgent vector-borne diseases as a global health problem. , 1998, Emerging infectious diseases.

[34]  D. Paini,et al.  Global threat to agriculture from invasive species , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[35]  Jean J Turgeon,et al.  Managing invasive populations of Asian longhorned beetle and citrus longhorned beetle: a worldwide perspective. , 2010, Annual review of entomology.

[36]  P. Sutton,et al.  Changes in the global value of ecosystem services , 2014 .

[37]  C. Mora,et al.  How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? , 2011, PLoS biology.

[38]  David R. Anderson,et al.  Kullback-Leibler information as a basis for strong inference in ecological studies , 2001 .

[39]  D. Bebber,et al.  Crop pests and pathogens move polewards in a warming world , 2013 .

[40]  Andrew M. Liebhold,et al.  Historical Accumulation of Nonindigenous Forest Pests in the Continental United States , 2010 .

[41]  David Adamson,et al.  Estimating the Economic Cost of One of the World's Major Insect Pests, Plutella xylostella (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae): Just How Long is a Piece of String? , 2012, Journal of economic entomology.

[42]  De‐Zhu Li,et al.  The science and economics of ex situ plant conservation. , 2009, Trends in plant science.

[43]  F. William Ravlin,et al.  Potential benefits of slowing the gypsy moth's spread. , 1996 .

[44]  W. Kurz,et al.  Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change , 2008, Nature.

[45]  S. Gopalan,et al.  Household economic impact of an emerging disease in terms of catastrophic out-of-pocket health care expenditure and loss of productivity: investigation of an outbreak of chikungunya in Orissa, India. , 2009, Journal of vector borne diseases.