Forecasting Future Invasions and their Impacts (FFII)

It is now widely accepted that prevention and early responses are the best strategies to mitigate the impacts of invasive alien species (IAS). Consequently, research efforts must focus on prediction, both of the likely distribution of invasions and of invader impact in newly invaded areas. Accounting for global environmental changes is obviously crucial for these predictions. It is also important to combine our understanding of broad-scale patterns from global studies with our understanding of finer scale and more detailed mechanisms from specific communities. Our overall objective is to better forecast the future of invasions and their impacts worldwide. For these predictions, we will use analyses focusing on (a) the patterns, (b) the processes, (c) the impacts and (d) the future of biological invasions. The DFG-funded part of the project will also cover all of these aspects, with a focus on macroecological analyses, using the IUCN list of 100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Species, the list of the 800 IAS in the Global Invasive Species Database (GISD), and the 60 000 IUCN Red-Listed species. We will re-classify the current impact categories in the GISD and apply the new categorization to all IAS in this GISD database. Combining these two points will permit us to assess patterns in global spread and impact of the IAS worldwide, providing a global assessment of the future impact of IAS on the 60,000 species in the IUCN Red List Database. For this effort, we will benefit from access to both the IUCN Red List and Global Invasive Species Database to interlink the two databases, through a tight collaboration with IUCN and ISSG as privileged stakeholders. We will complete this approach by studying the finer scale of ecological communities, using as an animal model a large and homogeneous taxonomic group, the Formicidae (ants). In this regard, we will aim at incorporating ecological components to complement our bioclimatic modelling approaches to predict the future distribution of these species, as well as the mechanisms and magnitude of their likely impact in invaded areas.