China is the world’s fourth-largest country in terms of landmass. Its highly diverse biogeography presents opportunities for many invasive alien insects. However, physical and climate barriers sometimes prevent locally occurring species from spreading. China has 560 confirmed invasive alien species; 125 species are insect pests, and 92 species damage the agricultural ecosystem. The estimated annual economic loss due to alien invasive species is more than $18.9 billion. Recently, researchers at State Key Laboratory of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection of CAAS have published a review paper on Annual Review of Entomology about the invasion and management of agricultural alien insects in China.

In this review, they introduced the new pathways for invasive insects and drew a profile of insect invasions in China by insect family, source, time sequence, and geography. The list of the invasive alien insect pests (IAIPs) in China was available. They reviewed the invasiveness of IAIPs from the viewpoint of inherent superiority and mutualist facilitation and the invasibility of agricultural ecosystems from the viewpoint of cropping system complexity, land usage patterns, and geographic and climate barriers. They also addressed IAIP management in China, from established legislation guidelines to early warning, monitoring, spread blocking, and biological control. Finally, a number of future directions for research on biological invasions in China were suggested.

Research framework for biological invasions in China

More details are available on the bellow links:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ento-010715-023916

By Nianwan Yang
yangnianwan@caas.cn