Geographical distribution modelling of the bronze bug: a worldwide invasion

Abstract

1 The present study investigated the environmental variables that define a suitable climate for the bronze bug, Thaumastocoris peregrinus Carpintero & Dellapé, using presence-only data, with the aim of identifying areas that have a suitable climate (and thus high probability) for future colonization and generating a spatially explicit predictive map of environmental suitability. An occurrence database (293 records) was compiled mainly from the literature. 2 The environmental data were obtained from the WorldClim 1.3 dataset, and the models were performed using maxent, version 3.3.3k. Model performance was evaluated through cross-validation. We used the null models approach to test our models. For model calibration, two datasets were defined (a non conservative dataset and a conservative one) by comparing the bioclimatic variables between native and introduced range using boxplots. 3 According to both models, the range for T. peregrinus will continue to expand. In South America and Africa, the distribution of the bronze bug may expand mainly to the north-east and central areas. Special attention should be given to the regions of southern U.S.A., Central America, and southern China and nearby countries, where conditions are highly suitable but the bronze bug has not yet been recorded and could only arrive by human means. 4 Because Eucalyptus species, many of which are highly susceptible to infestation by the bronze bug, are increasingly being planted around the world, and because the bronze bug has spread so rapidly over the past 8 years, the bronze bug may be expected to appear in many areas where it has not yet been recorded.

Predicting the potential invasion suitability of regions to cassava lacebug pests (Heteroptera: Tingidae:Vatigaspp.)

“…Climatic model predictions are an important tool and a valuable first approach to the potential magnitude and distributional pattern of future impact of species, but they should be interpreted carefully as they do not consider important factors other than climate, such as biotic interactions (Montemayor et al , 2014). Thus, an area predicted as suitable does not mean that populations of the species will necessarily become successfully established there, but it is useful information for identifying areas of potential invasion and spread.…”

Household perception and infestation dynamics of bedbugs among residential communities and its potential distribution in Africa

“…The ASCII format output was then imported into QGIS 3.10.2 (using the QGIS 3.10.2 software, https://qgis.org/downloads/ ), following its conversion into a raster format file using R software. This was useful for the classification and visualization of the distribution area 63 , 64 . The potential suitable distribution of bedbugs was extracted using the Kenyan and African maps.…”

Invasions and Insect Conservation

“…Thus, two studies on the Australian Bronze bug ( Thaumastocoris peregrinus , Thaumastocoridae) using different climate modelling schemes (CLIMEX: Saavedra et al 2015 ; WorldClim 1.3: Montemajor et al 2015 ) both forecast considerable future spread of the bug, largely in association with Eucalyptus plantations, but with some differences in detail of likely intensity of invasion across the largely overlapping predicted ranges. Many such models involve predictions of a suitable 'bioclimatic envelope', but many are based on uniform increases of temperature or precipitation levels, which may render them oversimplistic (Mika and Newman 2010 ).…”