Abstract
The South American tomato leaf miner Tuta absoluta is an economically important pest that recently invaded Africa, Asia, and Europe. The rapid spread and failure to predict suitable areas in the invaded range have concerns about whether this species underwent a niche shift during the biological invasion. In this study, we (i) reconstructed the dispersal routes of T. absoluta, (ii) tested if this species had undergone niche shift, (iii) and evaluated the consequences for predictions of ecological niche models. The two-dimensional centroid shift, overlap, unfilling, and expansion (COUE) framework and the n-dimensional hypervolume framework (NDH) were applied to compare the native and invasive niches. The reconstruction of the dispersal routes of T. absoluta showed that the species initially invaded highly suitable areas and further spread to regions with non-analogous climate conditions. This analysis also revealed a structured dispersal pattern and the frequent occurrence of long-dispersal events, indicating that trade and transport of goods played a key role in the spreading of this pest. Niche analysis showed divergent results depending on the framework considered. According to the COUE framework, the native and invasive niches of T. absoluta are equivalent, but the NDH framework indicates that both niches are divergent. The fact that the model developed with native and invasive occurrence outperformed the model built using only native occurrence records corroborates the hypothesis of niche shift. Our findings contribute to understanding the factors related to the rapid spread of T. absoluta and can be applied to prevent the introduction of other potential invaders.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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The authors would like to thank the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for the productivity scholarship (307852/2021-0) provided to Cesar Augusto Marchioro.
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This work was supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) (Grant Number 307852/2021-0).
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Marchioro, C.A., Krechemer, F.S. Reconstructing the biological invasion of Tuta absoluta: evidence of niche shift and its consequences for invasion risk assessment. J Pest Sci 97, 127–141 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10340-023-01627-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10340-023-01627-3