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A new trade route under development by the Chinese government might facilitate invasions by alien species, transporting diverse animal, plant, fungal, and microbial stowaways that could threaten natural resources and global biodiversity, new evidence suggests.
In an analysis published earlier this month (February 4) in Current Biology, researchers identified 14 invasion hotspots along the proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a network of overland corridors and maritime shipping lanes that will span half the planet. These areas have similar habitats, and are at a high risk of new species introductions based on the analysis of current movement of people and goods between these regions.
“The risk is that, as trade increase with the Belt and Road Initiative regions, that trade will bring greater numbers of accidental and intentional introductions,” Jeffrey Dukes, an ecologist at Purdue University in Indiana who also did not participate in the research, says ...
