Global air travel has become one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and public health by driving the spread of alien species and infectious diseases to new habitats, scientists reported yesterday.
The explosive growth of worldwide airline travel has seen passenger numbers rise 8 percent each year in the past three years, creating travel networks that link remote and isolated ecosystems for the first time, boosting the spread of micro-organisms and insects to unprecedented levels, the scientists said.
The introduction of insects and other organisms from foreign regions has triggered ecological disasters around the globe. Many have no natural predators in their new homes and thrive at the expense of native species that have not had time to evolve defenses against the invaders.
Researchers at Oxford University analysed records for more than 3 million scheduled flights between 3,570 airports around the world between May 2005 and April last year and calculated the most heavily-used routes.
They then overlaid global climate maps to indicate the times of the year that different parts of the world have the best conditions for alien species to survive.
By combining the information on flights and climate, Andrew Tatem and Simon Hay at Oxford's spatial ecology and epidemiology group identified destinations most at risk from foreign insects and micro-organisms.
The scientists found that the greatest threat to any country occurred from June to August, when many regions experienced similar climatic conditions and passenger numbers peaked.
However, closer inspection revealed specific routes that were at high risk of transferring organisms between distant countries.
The wide-ranging climate and large number of airports put the US at greatest risk.
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