A new study found that every day, hundreds of invasive plants roam the world, thanks to web commerce platforms such as eBay. Researchers found that online auctions could mess up the world's ecosystem and worsen the haywire brought about by biological attacks.
Biological invasions pose significant problems to nature conservation, particularly because species are still being transferred all around the world in an increasingly swift manner.
Horticulture or the practice of garden cultivation is one of the ways that can bring non-native species and cause plant invasions.
Web commerce or trading via the Internet is among the significant drivers that led to the drastic structural changes and global widespread of the horticultural sector. With this, a group of scientists from the ETH Zurich headed by Christoph Kueffer, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Integrative Biology, surveyed web commerce trade being employed via auction or sales websites.
The researchers devised a customized software program and through an automated search algorithm, they monitored the online trade of plants in 10 auction sites including eBay, every day for 50 days.
Throughout the course of the survey, the researchers took note of the types of plants being sold online, the countries where sellers come from and the frequency of sales. They also reviewed the invasive plants included in the lists devised by different groups such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to identify whether the plants being sold are considered invasive somewhere across the globe.
The results of the study, published in the journal Conservation Biology, showed that there are about 2,625 species of plants for sale on eBay. Among the said number, 501 were classified as invasive in at least one part of the world. The researchers also found that 35 of the invasive plants identified online were listed in the 100 worst invasive species of the IUCN.
Franziska Humair, one of the study authors, said that the team did not anticipate that the invasive plant sales across the world could be so extensive.
The results of the study signify that plant sales in online platforms are not being regulated well by biosecurity measures. The researchers recommended that automated tracking of web commerce may help avoid the expansion of invasive species and provide data on rampant trade networks across national boundaries.
"To put it briefly, the vast majority of invasive species can be easily obtained with just a click of the mouse," said Humair.
Law enforcement concerning plant trade is not adequately practiced. Plant dealers, on the other hand, cannot possibly monitor the different rules on invasive species across all nations. Hence, it looks as if no one can actually control the emergence of online trade of species recognized to be hazardous.
Photo: Ruth Lozano | Flickr
