Development and application of a second-generation multilingual tool for invasion risk screening of non-native terrestrial plants

Under the increasing threat to native ecosystems posed by non-native species invasions, there is an urgent need for decision support tools that can more effectively identify non-native species likely to become invasive. As part of the screening (first step) component in non-native species risk analysis, decision support tools have been developed for aquatic and terrestrial organisms. Amongst these tools is the Weed Risk Assessment (WRA) for screening non-native plants. The WRA has provided the foundations for developing the first-generation WRA-type Invasiveness Screening Kit (ISK) tools applicable to a range of aquatic species, and more recently for the second-generation ISK tools applicable to all aquatic organisms (including plants) and terrestrial animals. Given the most extensive usage of the latter toolkits, this study describes the development and application of the Terrestrial Plant Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (TPS-ISK). As a second-generation ISK tool, the TPS-ISK is a multilingual turnkey application that provides several advantages relative to the WRA: (i) compliance with the minimum standards against which a protocol should be evaluated for invasion process and management approaches; (ii) enhanced questionnaire comprehensiveness including a climate change component; (iii) provision of a level of confidence; (iv) error-free computation of risk scores; (v) multilingual support; (vi) possibility for across-study comparisons of screening outcomes; (vii) a powerful graphical user interface; (viii) seamless software deployment and accessibility with improved data exchange. The TPS-ISK successfully risk-ranked five representative sample species for the main taxonomic groups supported by the tool and ten angiosperms previously screened with the WRA for Turkey. The almost 20-year continuous development and evolution of the ISK tools, as opposed to the WRA, closely meet the increasing demand by scientists and decision-makers for a reliable, comprehensive, updatable and easily deployable decision support tool. For terrestrial plant screening, these requirements are therefore met by the newly developed TPS-ISK.

Development and application of a multilingual electronic decision-support tool for risk screening non-native terrestrial animals under current and future climate conditions

Electronic decision-support tools are becoming an essential component of government strategies to tackle non-native species invasions. This study describes the development and application of a multilingual electronic decision-support tool for screening terrestrial animals under current and future climate conditions: the Terrestrial Animal Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (TAS-ISK). As an adaptation of the widely employed Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (AS-ISK), the TAS-ISK question template inherits from the original Weed Risk Assessment (WRA) and related WRA-type toolkits and complies with the ‘minimum requirements’ for use with the recent European Regulation on invasive alien species of concern. The TAS-ISK consists of 49 basic questions on the species’ biogeographical/historical traits and its biological/ecological interactions, and of 6 additional questions to predict how climate change is likely to influence the risks of introduction, establishment, dispersal and impact of the screened species. Following a description of the main features of this decision-support tool as a turnkey software application and of its graphical user interface with support for 32 languages, sample screenings are provided in different risk assessment areas for one representative species of each of the main taxonomic groups of terrestrial animals supported by the toolkit: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, annelids, insects, molluscs, nematodes, and platyhelminths. The highest-scoring species were the red earthworm Lumbricus rubellus for the Aegean region of Turkey and the New Zealand flatworm Arthurdendyus triangulatus for Croatia. It is anticipated that adoption of this toolkit will mirror that of the worldwide employed AS-ISK, hence allowing to share information and inform decisions for the prevention of entry and/or dispersal of (high-risk) non-native terrestrial animal species – a crucial step to implement early-stage control and eradication measures as part of rapid-response strategies to counteract biological invasions.