Context

With accelerated land-use change throughout the world, increased understanding of the relative effects of landscape composition and configuration on biological system and bioinvasion in particular, is needed to design effective management strategies. However, this topic is poorly understood in part because empirical studies often fail to account for large gradients of habitat complexity and offer insufficient or even no replication across habitats.

Objectives

The aim of this study was to disentangle the independent and interactive effects of landscape composition and landscape configuration on the establishment and spread of invasive insect species.

Methods

We explore a spatially-explicit, mechanistic modeling framework that allows for systematic investigation of the impact of changes in landscape composition and landscape configuration on establishment and spread of invasive insect species. Landscape metrics are used as an indicators of invasive insect establishment and spread.

Results

We showed that the presence of an Allee effect leads to a balance between the effectiveness of spread and invasion success. Spread is maximized at an intermediate dispersal level and inhibited at both low and high levels of dispersal. The landscape, by either increasing or mitigating the dispersal abilities of a species, can lead to a rate of spread under a dispersal threshold for which density and spread is at the highest.

Conclusion

Our study proposes that change in landscape structure is an additional explanation of the highly variable spread dynamics observed in natural and anthropogenic landscapes. Consequently, a landscape-scale perspective could significantly improve spread risk assessment and the design of control or containment strategies.