Predicting the survival of immigrant insect pests in new environments.

Insect pests and diseases of crops will continue to be spread around the world, despite all efforts to stop them. Their movements will be paralleled by the spread of weeds. On arrival at their new destination these pest species encounter a new environment. In order to establish, they need a favourable climate, suitable host plants, absence of severe competition, and other physical needs such as shelter or specific soil types. The response of an invading species to the climate in a new environment can be estimated using the CLIMEX model. A full pest risk analysis needs to combine such information with that on non-climatic factors. PESKY is a generic expert system for pest risk analysis. It integrates the risks from a potential source location of infestation and a pathway of entry to the new destination with the suitability of the new environment, to estimate the overall risk posed by the pest at the destination. To support such information systems there is a need for comprehensive databases of pests, their distributions, hosts and economically important attributes.