Predicting the past to understand the future of biological invasions (PredictiveAliens-2)

• Applicant: Dr. Hanno Seebens
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521530235

The introduction and spread of species by humans – the so-called biological invasion – is considered as major driver of global change and biodiversity loss. The introduction of alien species has intensified continuously globally, reaching highest annual rates ever recorded. In several regions of the world, the number of alien species already exceeded the number of native species. As there are no signs that the annual rates of introduction will decline in the near future, we have to expect many more species to come. In recent years, research on biological invasions has greatly intensified with major advances in understanding the underlying dynamics, data provisioning and global analyses of the distribution and spread. However, despite these advancements we are still severely limited in predicting dynamics of biological invasions, which is in stark contrast to other drivers of global change such as climate and land-use changes, for which models and scenarios of changes and impacts have been developed since decades. This project is intended to close this gap. The overall aim of this project is to improve our understanding and predictions of biological invasions over large temporal and spatial scales. To achieve this, we will first quantify flows of alien species, driver dynamics and biases globally. We will build new databases of alien species spread to investigate the flows of spread. We will adapt models from economics to simulate networks of driver dynamics, which in turn can be used to investigate the underlying mechanisms of alien species spread. To account for biases, we will develop new measures for quantifying data gaps and uncertainties, which will be included in the analysis. This data work will pave the ground for developing a novel global invasion model to simulate the spread and establishment of alien species at unprecedented scale and comprehensiveness. This model development will take advantage from recent advances in the field, which so far are, however, only applied in isolation. By integrating these advances, we will be able to analyse the full invasion process from native ranges over introduction and spread to impacts across space, time and taxa in a holistic way. This will generate new opportunities to test hypotheses of biological invasions and community assembly at a scale, which has never been possible before. Finally, we will implement the recently developed scenarios of biological invasions to project dynamics of alien species spread and accumulation into the future under different scenarios. The proposed work has the potential to provide a real break-through in invasion ecology. And also beyond invasion ecology, the project will considerably improve our general understanding of how ecological communities shape in the Anthropocene. The findings will add an important piece for comprehensive biodiversity assessments worldwide and will help tighten risk assessments and mitigation strategies of invasion worldwide.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants