Photo Credits: Dr. Joe Keller
Predicting how invasive species will spread is essential to manage and reduce the threat to biodiversity and natural resources. Many invasive species spread in two ways: diffusive spread, which is a slow expansion into nearby areas, and jump dispersal, which are sudden long-distance movements that create new outbreaks from the main invaded area. Jump dispersals are often human-assisted and can accelerate the invasion, but it has been difficult to distinguish the two types of movement using only spatial occurrence data.
Former iEcoLab members Dr. Nadege Belouard, Dr. Sebastiano De Bona, and Isabella Smith, along with PIs Dr. Jocelyn Behm and Dr. Matthew Helmus, introduce jumpID, a new R package designed to distinguish jump dispersal and diffusive spread in biological invasions. jumpID has been applied to analyze the spread of spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula, a pest severely impacting forest and grape industries. The R package contains a dataset of 123,542 occurrence records, uncovering 152 dispersal jumps between 2014-2022. Management efforts that are targeting spotted lanternfly jump dispersal should focus on a 200-km buffer around the invasion boundary, which is where 89% of jumps occur.
jumpID is openly available and enhances invasive species management by improving parameter estimation and effective containment perimeters, which you can read more about here!
Belouard, N, S De Bona, MR Helmus, IG Smith, JE Behm. 2025. A method to quantify jump dispersal of invasive species from occurrence data: the care of the spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula. NeoBiota, 98: 319-334.