Laís Carneiro

Biological invasions impose substantial ecological and socio-economic burdens, yet the global economic impacts of invasive plants remain incompletely quantified. Here, we provide the first comprehensive global synthesis of reported monetary costs associated with invasive plants using the InvaCost database. After data validation and filtering for highly reliable, observed estimates, we identified a total of US$361.8 billion in documented costs between 1960 and 2022, representing a conservative baseline of invasive plant impacts at global level. Costs were unevenly distributed across taxa and regions, with a small number of species and families accounting for the vast majority of costs, and with North America accounting for 61% of reported impacts. Terrestrial environments and the agricultural sector bore the greatest economic burden. The cost of damage was over three times the amount spent on management; preventive investments were negligible. Annual costs increased markedly from the 1990s onward, exceeding US$50 billion in some years. Cumulative annual damage costs followed a sigmoidal trajectory, indicating rapid escalation over recent decades and suggesting substantial future economic pressures if historical cost-accumulation patterns continue. Socio-economic context and size of countries were key predictors of reported costs, highlighting strong reporting and capacity biases. Despite the magnitude of documented impacts, plant invasion costs remain severely underestimated due to taxonomic, geographic and sectoral data gaps. Our synthesis reveals the scale, distribution and increasing burden of invasive plant costs globally, underscoring the urgent need for improved reporting, proactive prevention and more effective management to limit future economic losses

Invasive species pose a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Although it is widely recognized that invasion impacts differ across habitats and taxonomic groups, a systematic evaluation of their perceived ecological importance has remained unexplored. We surveyed over 400 international experts in invasion science to systematically assess the importance of the 19 different types of ecological impacts across habitats, taxa, and levels of biological organization. We found consistent patterns in expert perceptions, where changes in assemblage structure, population size, and species loss were rated as most important, while others, like soundscape, fire regime, and microclimate, consistently received lower scores. Scores between taxa varied more than scores between habitats, while responses were more consistent among respondents with greater experience in the field. Our results highlight the impact types that would require greater management efforts (i.e., the higher scores), as well as those that could benefit from further research (i.e., the lower scores).

Despite ongoing efforts to categorize the diverse ecological impacts of biological invasions, ecology lacks a standardized metric to translate these heterogeneous and context-dependent observations into a shared quantitative scale. Here, we introduce InvaPact, a metric that rigorously integrates the normative importance of impact types with their empirical severity into a unified numerical currency, bounded between 0 and 100. InvaPact enables robust comparisons across diverse taxonomic, geographic, and ecological contexts, by bridging structured qualitative classifications and rigorous quantitative synthesis. This unifying tool has the potential to catalyze macroecological syntheses. It allows researchers to aggregate isolated datasets, test foundational ecological hypotheses, and forecast temporal impact trajectories. In doing so, InvaPact provides the standardized translation of the scientific evidence base required to prioritize global conservation interventions, assess ecosystem damage, and help to guide international biosecurity policies under global change. This presentation will serve as an introduction of the session, that will contain several presentations of analyses of impacts of invasions at the macro-ecological scale.

Quantifying the ecological impacts of biological invasions on a standardized basis is essential to fully understand how severely they impact native species and ecosystems. The InvaPact database provides the most complete and up-to-date evidence data extracted from more than 10,000 peer-reviewed studies globally. In addition, this database includes the quantitative translation of the depicted impacts of each of these studies into a unified metric presented in the same session. This provides in total over 100,000 quantified impact events, each described with 76 variables, which allows to characterize each impact type, each invasive species, each invaded ecosystem alone and associated with various drivers. This study is the first global analysis of this massive database on quantitative ecological impacts. Here, we compare the global impacts of large taxonomic groups (micro-organisms, fungi, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates), highlighting the most impactful invasive species, both in terms of highest impacts and in terms of diversity of types of impacts. We analyzed impacts at several spacial scales (countries, continents, habitats and ecosystems), and show that they are not evenly impacted and reported, especially between ecological levels. Last, we quantified which mechanisms are the most associated with high impacts, and how impact values have been evolving with time. Together, these results provide a strong knowledge basis for fundamental and applied research, management and policy. This global analysis is intended to serve as concluding presentation to the session.

The multi‐faceted threats of habitat degradation and biological invasions are increasing concerns for the integrity of freshwater ecosystems and their associated services globally. Removal of anthropogenic riverine barriers has gained momentum over the last three decades, motivated by the maintenance requirements of the aging infrastructure, while also functioning as a primary means of restoring river connectivity to promote ecosystem recovery and native biodiversity. Although barrier removals are intended to benefit native species dispersal, these actions can simultaneously facilitate non‐native species spread and increase biological invasion risk, creating a conservation paradox. Using a systematic review and meta‐analysis, we synthesised the patterns and trends in responses between native and non‐native populations to riverine barrier removals globally. Since 1998, research interest in the effects of barrier removals has rapidly accumulated, but with a major geographic imbalance towards North America (80% of studies). Fishes were the most studied taxon (74%), followed by riparian and aquatic plants (24%) and invertebrates (15%). The removal of dams dominated (85%), compared to road culverts (7%) and weirs (2%). Results from 2840 reported effect sizes showed that both native and non‐native population sizes generally increased after barrier removal, but the positive effect was strongest for native species. Moreover, these population responses were highly context‐dependent, with taxonomic grouping, sampling directionality and time since removal affecting outcomes. Non‐native population growth outstripped that of native species in the first few years post‐removal and non‐native invertebrates responded the most favourably to barrier removal. While native species typically benefit from barrier removals overall, our analyses highlight context‐specific responses that can simultaneously benefit non‐native populations and erode long‐term conservation outcomes. As river restoration efforts continue to gain traction globally, further planning and research are required to anticipate and assess long term population recoveries, to reconcile conservation quagmires around interacting global environmental changes.

The ecological impacts of biological invasions vary widely in type, scale, and severity, highlighting the need for consistent assessment tools. The Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) provides a standardized framework for assessing their effects, but focuses mainly on population-level impacts. We introduce the Extended EICAT (EEICAT), which incorporates impacts across three ecological dimensions, from individuals to ecosystems, with an impact-based approach. EEICAT enables classification of 19 impact types at the invasion-event level, making it suitable for primary research, synthesis, and management. This framework aims to improve the detection, comparison, and communication of complex ecological impacts caused by biological invasions.

Biological invasions have been estimated to damage the global economy at a scale comparable to natural disasters. However, these estimates rely on data from a small proportion of invasive species and countries. Effectively managing these invasions requires better cost estimates for neglected species and regions. Using random forest, we estimated the economic cost of 1,419 invasive species in 184 countries, from 1970 to 2020. The global cost of biological invasions during this period was 10.3 trillion US dollars, almost six times higher than previous estimates. Biological invasions have cost hundreds of billions annually, decades earlier than previously thought. In contrast with previous studies, we show that plants are responsible for the majority of these costs. Low- and middle-income countries were most affected, proportionally to their Gross Domestic Product. A coordinated effort is crucial to prevent the aggravation of these damages in the coming decades, particularly in economically vulnerable regions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping both sport management and environmental science, yet these developments have largely evolved in parallel. AI can serve not merely as a technical tool but also as a catalyst for systemic sport ecology, a field that integrates sport, digital innovation and environmental sustainability. Advances in discriminative, generative and agentic AI enable the synthesis of complex ecological and sport-related data, improving monitoring, forecasting, resource efficiency, policy design, and decision-making across scales. In doing so, AI offers a pathway beyond fragmented sustainability interventions and can support holistic approaches to the interconnected crises of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. However, the catalytic potential of AI depends on responsible implementation, equitable access to data, and attention to environmental costs. In short, AI can drive systemic transformations by enhancing the collection and integration of social-ecological data, fostering governance innovation and operational sustainability within the sport sector.