European primary datasets of alien bacteria and viruses

Abstract

Bacteria and viruses are a natural component of Earth biodiversity and play an essential role in biochemical and geological cycles. They may also pose problems outside their native range, where they can negatively impact on natural resources, wildlife, and human health. To address these challenges and develop sustainable conservation strategies, a thorough understanding of their invasion related- factors is needed: origin, country and year of introduction, and pathways dynamics. Yet, alien bacteria and viruses are underrepresented in invasion ecology studies, which limits our ability to quantify their impacts and address future introductions. This study provides primary datasets of alien bacteria and viruses of plants and animals present in the European environment. The datasets contain expert-revised data on 446 taxa and their invasion related- factors across terrestrial and aquatic environments. Taxa information are complemented with spatial occurrences. The datasets provide a basis for collaborative initiatives to improve the collection of alien bacteria and viruses’ data, and a starting point for data-driven conservation practices.

A spatio-temporal dataset of plant pests’ first introductions across the EU and potential entry pathways

“…Through the literature search and cross-referencing, 21 new pests were added to the original list. The recently published European primary datasets of alien bacteria and viruses 6 were also considered for comparison and 5 additional viruses were added to the list.…”

“…Despite national and international esfforts to prevent non-indigenous pests' introductions, their movements outside of their native range have clearly increased in recent years [1][2][3][4][5][6] . Almost all introductions today are in some way facilitated by human activities 7,8 : first, humans can carry new pests both unintentionally (e.g., inadvertent movement of a species on plants and plant products in traded commodities) and intentionally (e.g., the result of the deliberate introduction of a species outside of its native range, such as species introduced as biological control agents used for pest control 9 ); second, because humans might accelerate the natural rate of invasions through habitat disturbance favouring the establishment of non-native species 10 .…”