Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Apr 6;118(14). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2016337118.
The pet trade has become a multibillion-dollar global business, with tens of millions of animals traded annually. Pets are sometimes released by their owners or escape, and can become introduced outside of their native range, threatening biodiversity, agriculture, and health. So far, a comprehensive analysis of invasive species traded as pets is lacking. Here, using a unique dataset of 7,522 traded vertebrate species, we show that invasive species are strongly overrepresented in trade across mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. However, it is unclear whether this occurs because, over time, pet species had more opportunities to become invasive, or because invasive species have a greater commercial success. To test this, we focused on the emergent pet trade in ants, which is too recent to be responsible for any invasions so far. Nevertheless, invasive ants were similarly overrepresented, demonstrating that the pet trade specifically favors invasive species. We show that ant species with the greatest commercial success tend to have larger spatial distributions and more generalist habitat requirements, both of which are also associated with invasiveness. Our findings call for an increased risk awareness regarding the international trade of wildlife species as pets.
宠物贸易已成为一项价值数十亿美元的全球产业，每年有数千万只动物交易。宠物有时会被主人放生或逃跑，并可能在其原生范围之外引入，从而威胁到生物多样性、农业和健康。到目前为止，缺乏对作为宠物交易的入侵物种的全面分析。在这里，我们使用一个独特的 7522 种交易脊椎动物物种数据集，表明入侵物种在哺乳动物、鸟类、爬行动物、两栖动物和鱼类的贸易中严重过剩。然而，目前还不清楚这是否是因为随着时间的推移，宠物物种有更多的机会成为入侵物种，还是因为入侵物种具有更大的商业成功。为了检验这一点，我们专注于蚂蚁这一新兴的宠物贸易，它出现的时间还不够长，目前还没有造成任何入侵。然而，入侵蚂蚁的比例也同样过高，这表明宠物贸易特别青睐入侵物种。我们发现，商业上最成功的蚂蚁物种往往具有更大的空间分布和更普遍的栖息地需求，而这两者也与入侵性有关。我们的研究结果呼吁人们更加关注作为宠物的野生动物国际贸易的风险。
