Lin Wen, Zhou Guofa, Cheng Xinyue, Xu Rumei
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Sciences and Ecological Engineering, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
PLoS One. 2007 Nov 21;2(11):e1208. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001208.
Increasing levels of global trade and intercontinental travel have been cited as the major causes of biological invasion. However, indirect factors such as economic development that affect the intensity of invasion have not been quantitatively explored. Herein, using principal factor analysis, we investigated the relationship between biological invasion and economic development together with climatic information for China from the 1970s to present. We demonstrate that the increase in biological invasion is coincident with the rapid economic development that has occurred in China over the past three decades. The results indicate that the geographic prevalence of invasive species varies substantially on the provincial scale, but can be surprisingly well predicted using the combination of economic development (R(2) = 0.378) and climatic factors (R(2) = 0.347). Economic factors are proven to be at least equal to if not more determinant of the occurrence of invasive species than climatic factors. International travel and trade are shown to have played a less significant role in accounting for the intensity of biological invasion in China. Our results demonstrate that more attention should be paid to economic factors to improve the understanding, prediction and management of biological invasions.
全球贸易水平的提高和洲际旅行被认为是生物入侵的主要原因。然而，影响入侵强度的间接因素，如经济发展，尚未得到定量研究。在此，我们运用主因子分析方法，研究了20世纪70年代至今中国生物入侵与经济发展以及气候信息之间的关系。我们发现，生物入侵的增加与中国过去三十年快速的经济发展相吻合。结果表明，入侵物种的地理分布在省级尺度上差异很大，但通过经济发展（R² = 0.378）和气候因素（R² = 0.347）的结合能够得到惊人的准确预测。事实证明，经济因素在决定入侵物种的发生方面至少与气候因素同等重要，甚至更为关键。国际旅行和贸易在中国生物入侵强度的形成中所起的作用相对较小。我们的研究结果表明，为了更好地理解、预测和管理生物入侵，应更多地关注经济因素。
