Li Yiming's research team reveals the global monetary cost of invasive alien mammals

Invasive alien species not only harm biodiversity and ecosystem services, but also affect economic activities and social life, resulting in high monetary losses
.
Understanding the economic costs of biological invasions can optimize the management of invasive species and enhance public awareness
of biosecurity.

The research team of Li Yiming of the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences used the Global Economic Cost Database of Invasive Species (InvaCost) to assess the global economic costs
of invasive alien mammals.
They found that between 1960 and 2021, the total economic cost of invasive mammals worldwide was $462 billion (at the 2017 dollar exchange rate).

They also found trends in the economic cost of mammalian invasions over time and distribution patterns
across geographic regions, taxa, cost types, and affected sectors.

Analysis of cost accumulation over time suggests that the economic cost of invasive mammal species will increase as the frequency of biological invasions increases globally (Figure 1).

The economic costs of invasive species are greatly underestimated due to actual costs incurred and scientifically documented time lags and geographical biases, and the economic costs of many invasive species are often not scientifically assessed and reported
until decades later.

The overall economic costs of exotic mammals include hazard costs and management costs, with hazard costs accounting for more than 90% of the total costs and management costs accounting for less than 8%, indicating that scientific management of biological invasions can achieve huge economic benefits
.
The total global cost is mainly concentrated in five species: burrowing rabbit, domestic cat, black house mouse, Eurasian wild boar and beaver rat (Figure 2).

The monetary cost of invasive species to North America accounts for more than 60% of the total cost, much higher than that of other continents, mainly due to the relatively complete
record of cost hazards to alien species in North America.
The cost mainly comes from the harm
caused to agriculture, the environment and other industries.
It is urgent to fill the research gap on the regional economic costs of exotic species and identify the drivers of economic costs
.

The research results were published in Science of the Total Environment under the title of "Global economic costs of mammal invasions", with Wang Siqi, a doctoral student in the Key Laboratory of the School of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, as the first author of the paper, and researcher Yiming Li as the corresponding author
。 The research was supported
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Key Project (32030070), the Second Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) Program (2019QZKK0501), and the Hebei University High-level Talent Research Startup Project (050001-521100222045).

Full text link: https://doi.
org/10.
1016/j.
scitotenv.
2022.
159479

Figure 1.
The temporal dynamics of
economic cost accumulation.
robust cost: The cost recorded with high confidence; Total cost: Total cost, including the cost of
actual observations and model quantification.

Figure 2.
The global cost of mammal invasions and important hazards by
continent.
Red and yellow represent high cost and low cost
, respectively.