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Economic cost of the Asian hornet invasion control 11
The economic cost of control of the invasive
yellow-legged Asian hornet
Morgane Barbet-Massin1, Jean-Michel Salles2, Franck Courchamp1
1 Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, AgroParisTech, Ecologie Systématique Evolution, 91405, Orsay, France
2 CEE-M, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, INRAE, Montpellier SupAgro, Montpellier, France
Corresponding author: Franck Courchamp (franck.courchamp@u-psud.fr)
Academic editor: Ingolf Kühn|Received 25 July 2019| Accepted 7 December 2019|Published 3 April 2020
Citation: Barbet-Massin M, Salles J-M, Courchamp F (2020) e economic cost of control of the invasive yellow-legged
Asian hornet. NeoBiota 55: 11–25. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.55.38550
Abstract
Since its accidental introduction in 2003 in France, the yellow-legged Asian hornet Vespa velutina ni-
grithorax is rapidly spreading through France and Europe. Economic assessments regarding the costs of
invasive species often reveal important costs from required control measures or damages. Despite the rapid
invasion of the Asian yellow-legged hornet in Europe and potential damage to apiculture and pollination
services, the costs of its invasion have not been evaluated yet. Here we aimed at studying the costs arising
from the Asian yellow-legged hornet invasion by providing the rst estimate of the control cost. Today,
the invasion of the Asian yellow-legged hornet is mostly controlled by nest destruction. We estimated that
nest destruction cost €23 million between 2006 and 2015 in France. e yearly cost is increasing as the
species keeps spreading and could reach €11.9 million in France, €9.0 million in Italy and €8.6 million
in the United Kingdom if the species lls its current climatically suitable distribution. Although more
work will be needed to estimate the cost of the Asian yellow-legged hornet on apiculture and pollination
services, they likely exceed the current costs of control with nest destruction. It could thus be worth in-
creasing control eorts by aiming at destroying a higher percentage of nests.
Keywords
biological invasions, IAS, Invasive alien species, yellow-legged hornet, impact
Copyright Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
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NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
doi: 10.3897/neobiota.55.38550
http://neobiota.pensoft.net
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Advancing research on alien species and biological invasions
A peer-reviewed open-access journal
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Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. / NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
12
Introduction
Invasive species are one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
(Bellard et al. 2016) and part of global environmental change (Simberlo et al. 2013;
Lewis and Maslin 2015). As globalisation keeps increasing, so does the amount of suc-
cessful invasions (Seebens et al. 2017). Besides their negative impact on biodiversity
and ecosystems, invasive species are also very costly to the global economy (Marbuah
et al. 2014; Bradshaw et al. 2016). Indeed, invasive species can be very costly to goods
and services such as agriculture (Paini et al. 2016), forestry (Aukema et al. 2010), aq-
uaculture, tourism, recreation and infrastructure (Su 2002), but also to human health
(Gubler 1998). Categorising and estimating these costs is not an easy task, so frame-
works have been developed to categorise them, especially in ecology (Bradshaw et al.
2016). Bradshaw et al. (2016) suggest a framework that categorizes costs of species
invasions into prevention, damage and response costs, but also into goods and services,
human health, ecosystem processes and ecology. ey estimated that “invasive insects
cost a minimum of US$70.0 billion per year globally” in goods and services, “while
associated health costs exceed US$6.9 billion per year”, although these estimates are
believed to be much underestimated (Bradshaw et al. 2016). Amongst the invasive spe-
cies for which no cost has been estimated yet, the yellow-legged hornet Vespa velutina
nigrithorax, the invasive sub-species of the Asian hornet, is considered an important
threat to both biodiversity and apiculture and the importance of the damage it causes
is regularly invoked in the media.
Vespa velutina nigrithorax is an Asian hornet native to China that invaded South
Korea in 2003 and France in 2004. e species was rst identied in 2003 in the
southern part of South Korea (Kim et al. 2006). Introduced from China, it invaded
most of the peninsula at an approximate rate of 10-20 km per year and became more
abundant than other native Vespa species (Choi et al. 2012). e invasive hornet was
then introduced into Japan: in Tsushima Island in 2012 (Ueno 2014) and Kyushu
Island in 2015 (Minoshima et al. 2015). In France, V. velutina nigrithorax was rst ob-
served in south-western France in 2004 (Haxaire et al. 2006) after its accidental intro-
duction from China (Arca et al. 2015). It spread rapidly, colonising most of France at
an approximate rate of 60-80 km per year (Rome et al. 2015; Robinet et al. 2016) and
progressively invading other European countries: Spain in 2010 (López et al. 2011),
Portugal (Grosso-Silva and Maia 2012) and Belgium (Rome et al. 2013) in 2011, Italy
in 2012 (Demichelis et al. 2014), Germany in 2014 (Witt 2015) and, nally, the UK
where it was rst recorded on 20 Sept 2016 (Budge et al. 2017). e rapid spread of
the species in France and Europe is not necessarily a consequence of human-mediated
dispersal, indicating that the species can rapidly spread on its own (Robinet et al.
2016), although human-mediated dispersal is not uncommon (Bertolino et al. 2016).
Both climate and land-use have been shown to inuence the spread of V. velutina ni-
grithorax (Villemant et al. 2011; Bessa et al. 2016; Fournier et al. 2017).
e yellow-legged hornet is believed to have several negative consequences on
apiculture, biodiversity and, thus, on human well-being. Indeed, within its native and
invasive range, V. velutina nigrithorax actively feeds on honeybees (Tan et al. 2007;
Economic cost of the Asian hornet invasion control 13
Monceau et al. 2013, 2014; Arca et al. 2014; Choi and Kwon 2015). Besides, the spe-
cies could also have a negative impact on ecosystems by feeding on wild insects (Beggs
et al. 2011) and contributing to the current global decline of pollination services
and honey production (Villemant et al. 2011; Arca et al. 2014; Rortais et al. 2017).
Given that nests are often found in urban areas (Franklin et al. 2017; Fournier et al.
2017), stings to humans are possible. Although multiple stings can be dangerous for
humans, very few cases have been reported so far (de Haro et al. 2010), but the size
of the hornet and its reputation for aggression make its presence dreaded and nest
destruction systematically requested when the nest is close to human habitations or
human activities. All of these negative impacts of the yellow-legged hornet invasion
are likely to have an important economic cost, although such costs have not yet been
estimated. Besides these potentially high cost, controlling the species in the already
invaded areas and preventing the species further spread also have an economic cost
that has not been estimated either.
e control of V. velutina nigrithorax invasion is mainly undertaken by nest de-
struction and bait trapping (Monceau et al. 2014), although neither of these methods
are sucient to achieve eradication even in a limited area when the yellow-legged
hornet population is already too dense (Beggs et al. 2011). Several attractants have
been used for bait trapping (Kishi and Goka 2017) but their eciency is very limited
as baits catch individuals rather than colonies. Moreover, they do not target V. velu-
tina nigrithorax exclusively (Monceau et al. 2012). A previous study concluded that
the most ecient strategy for controlling the yellow-legged hornet invasion remains
to identify its presence early in new areas (with the help of predictions) and locate
the nests for their systematic destruction (Robinet et al. 2016). In this study, we
aimed at providing the rst cost estimates for the control of the yellow-legged hornet
invasion associated with nest removal. As these costs are not readily available for the
entire invaded area, we did so by identifying potential correlates of the cost of nest
destruction and extrapolated its total cost in the already invaded area, as well as in its
potential invaded area.
Methods
e economic costs of invasive insects can be divided into three main categories: costs
related to the prevention of invasion, the cost of ghting the invasion and the costs of
the damage caused by the invasion (Bradshaw et al. 2016). ere is no simple relation-
ship between these cost categories. As the invasion is already underway, the costs re-
lated to the prevention of the invasion are non-existent. e costs of the damage caused
by the invasion will be addressed in another study, as they require very specic data and
methods. e main identiable cost of ghting the invasion of yellow-legged hornets
is the cost of nest destruction and will be the focus of this study. is rst step, when
combined with a subsequent estimation of damage costs, will allow the assessment of
cost eectiveness, return on investment and similar indicators which will be useful in-
dicators for decision-making frameworks for the use of funds for control programmes.
Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. / NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
14
Data gathering regarding the cost of nest destruction
Estimating the average price of destroying a yellow-legged hornet nest would, in prin-
ciple, be possible by surveying the many businesses providing such a service. However,
as our aim is to estimate the total cost of nest destruction in the entire invaded range
yearly, we also needed to know the total number of nests being destroyed each year.
It seemed quite testing to gather such data exhaustively within a large enough spatial
unit to then make reliable extrapolations. erefore, we chose to focus our eort on
identifying cities and departments subsidising nest destructions, as they were likely to
have data, such as the number of nests destroyed and the total amount it costs them
yearly. Indeed, given the rapid spread of the yellow-legged hornet, the administration
of some French cities and departments decided to subsidise the destruction of the
yellow-legged hornet in order to ght o the invasive species and the mechanism of
the subsidy obviously encourages all the actors to be recognised by these administra-
tions. To identify such cities and departments, we ran an internet search (using google.
fr) with the key words “subvention”, “destruction”, “nid” and “frelon asiatique” or
“vespa velutina” (i.e. “subsidy”, “destruction”, “nest” and “Asian hornet”). All cities and
departments, identied as subsidising the yellow-legged hornet nest destruction, were
then contacted to obtain data regarding the total yearly cost of nest destruction, as well
as the number of nests that were destroyed.
Extrapolating the cost of nest destruction spatially
To take into account invaded areas with no subsidy of nest destruction, we aimed at
spatially extrapolating this cost by identifying potential correlates of the cost of nest
destruction. As potential correlates, we chose to investigate the surface area and the
human population size of the spatial unit for which we were able to gather cost infor-
mation. As we could only gather a reduced dataset, potential correlations were inves-
tigated through simple models – a linear model and a log-log linear model: for each
potential correlate, we tted the two following models (1) y~x and (2) log(y)~log(x).
Spatial extrapolation to countries other than France, need to be adjusted to per cap-
ita GDP (in purchase power parity terms), i.e. to the cost of living in a given country.
To do that, we gathered the 2015 per capita GDP (PPP) of all countries and calculated
their ratio to the one of France. e spatially extrapolated cost in a given country is
then adjusted by multiplying it by this ratio.
However, if the yellow-legged hornet is rapidly spreading, we must limit our spa-
tial extrapolation to areas it currently occupies and to climatically suitable areas it
could likely invade in the next few years. As we aim at providing information useful
for managers and decision-makers now, we will not account here for climate change
of the next decades. We thus need to predict the potential distribution of the yellow-
legged hornet.
Economic cost of the Asian hornet invasion control 15
Modelling the potential distribution of the yellow-legged hornet
Presence data of the yellow-legged hornet in its native and invaded ranges
Presence data of the yellow-legged hornet from the native Asian range was obtained by
gathering information on museum specimens, published records and hornet sampling
performed in China (Villemant et al. 2011). As for the invaded range in Europe, data
from the French part of the invaded range came from the INPN database that ag-
gregates all validated French records (https://inpn.mnhn.fr/). To this French database,
we added the recent locations reported in other European countries (Spain, Portugal,
Italy, Belgium and Germany) (López et al. 2011; Rome et al. 2013; Porporato et al.
2014; Witt 2015; Goldarazena et al. 2015; Bertolino et al. 2016). Overall, we obtained
10,395 records in the European invaded range observed from 2004.
Climate data
We used the same eight climatic variables as in previous studies for the niche model-
ling of the yellow-legged hornet (Villemant et al. 2011; Barbet-Massin et al. 2013).
We considered: (1) annual mean temperature, (2) mean temperature of the warmest
month, (3) mean temperature of the coldest month, (4) temperature seasonality, (5)
annual precipitation, (6) precipitation of the wettest month, (7) precipitation of the
driest month and (8) precipitation seasonality. e seasonality is the coecient of vari-
ation of the monthly means. Current data were downloaded from the worldclim data-
base (Hijmans et al. 2005) (http://www.worldclim.org/) as 2.5 arc-min grids (subset of
the 19 bioclim variables). ese data are interpolations from observed data representa-
tive of current climatic conditions.
Climate suitability modelling
Climate suitability of the yellow-legged hornet was modelled by running eight dier-
ent modelling techniques implemented within the biomod2 package (3. 3-7 version)
(uiller et al. 2009) in R (R Core Team 2015): three regression methods (GLM,
GAM and MARS), two classication methods (CTA and FDA) and three machine
learning methods (ANN, BRT and RF). As no absence data were available for the
species, pseudo-absences were randomly drawn (Barbet-Massin et al. 2012) from the
South-East part of Asia and from Europe. We used 10,000 random pseudo-absences,
with the total weight of presences being equal to the total weight of pseudo-absences
(Barbet-Massin et al. 2012). As results might depend on the choice of pseudo-ab-
sences, models were replicated three times (with dierent pseudo-absences selection)
(Barbet-Massin et al. 2012). To obtain a consensus distribution, we used an ensemble
forecast technique (Marmion et al. 2009): the consensus distribution was calculated as
the average of all distributions across modelling techniques and pseudo-absences rep-
licates. Model predictive accuracy was evaluated through cross validation by splitting
the data into training data (70%) and evaluation data (30%). e data split for cross
validation was repeated ve times.
Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. / NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
16
Results
rough our data search, we were able to obtain data on total cost of nest destruction
(as well as the number of nests being destroyed) for 10 administrations (two depart-
ments and eight cities, Fig. 1). Human population was found to be a strong predictor
of the total cost of nest destruction, better so than the surface of the area studied (Table
1). e linear model was better than the log-log linear model, so it was selected for
further extrapolation. Spatial extrapolation of potential cost of nest destruction given
the population was then realised, based on a gridded population of the world (Center
for International Earth Science Information Network – CIESIN – Columbia Univer-
sity 2016) and adjusted to per capita GDP (PPP) (Table 1). is spatially extrapolated
cost was only applied where the climate is suitable for the yellow-legged hornet. e
predicted climate suitability is a continuous value (from 0 to 1). A 0.5 threshold is fre-
quently applied to transform the continuous suitability into binary output (suitable vs.
non suitable). However, the yellow-legged hornet is unlikely to be at equilibrium in its
invaded area, so we chose a less conservative threshold of 0.3 as the predicted climate
suitability might be underestimated. Climate suitability below 0.3 was forced to 0. Not
all climatically suitable areas have been invaded yet (Figure 2). To obtain a potential
spatial cost of nest destruction in all areas suitable for the yellow-legged hornet, we can
multiply the hornet climate suitability by the spatially extrapolated cost. is is the
estimated yearly cost once the hornet has established. In Europe, the main yearly costs,
once the hornet has colonised all its climatically suitable distribution, are estimated for
France (€11.9M), Italy (€9.0M) and the United Kingdom (€8.6M) (Fig. 3 and Table
1). In Japan and South Korea, where the species has already been observed, the total
yearly cost of nest destruction is estimated at €19.5M and €11.9M respectively (Fig. 3
and Table 1). If the species has been accidently introduced into the countries that have
not yet been invaded, the yearly cost of nest destruction could be important in some
countries, such as the USA (€26.9M), Australia (€3.6M), Turkey (€3.5M), Argentina
(€2.6M) and Brazil (€1.8M) (Fig. 3 and Table 1). All these estimated costs are contin-
gent on successful invasions.
In France, the hornet is already successfully spreading at a very fast rate and we
know which year each department was invaded. So, we estimated the yearly cost of
nest destruction since the start of the invasion, by only considering costs within in-
vaded departments each year (a department was considered as successfully invaded
when the tenth individual was observed). In 2006, only two years after the hornet was
rst observed in France, three departments were already invaded and the cost of nest
destruction was estimated at €408k (Fig. 4). Since then, the estimated yearly costs
have been increasing by ~€450k each year (Fig. 4), as the hornet keeps spreading and
invades new departments. Overall, we estimated €23M as the cost of nest destruction
between 2006 and 2015. If this temporal trend can be extrapolated for the next few
years (i.e. if the hornet keeps spreading at a similar rate), we expect the yearly cost of
nest destruction to reach an estimated value of €11.9M (given all suitable areas are
invaded) by 2032.
Economic cost of the Asian hornet invasion control 17
Figure 1. Relationship between population and the cost of nest destruction. e blue line represents the
selected linear model (model 3 in Table 1). e darker grey area represents the condence interval of the
regression curve. Note that both axes are logarithmic.
Figure 2. Consensus climate suitability of the yellow-legged hornet predicted from species distribution
modelling. e climate suitability can be interpreted as a probability of having a suitable climate. e
mean cross-validation TSS (respectively AUC) of all models considered to compute the consensus is 0.90
± 0.07 (respectively 0.97 ± 0.03).
Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. / NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
18
Figure 3. Estimated yearly cost of nest destruction if climatically suitable areas are fully invaded. Bars are
coloured in black if the species is already invading the country and in grey for countries where the species
has not established yet.
Figure 4. Estimated yearly cost of nest destruction in France since the start of the invasion given the
yearly invasive range. e darker grey area represents the condence interval of the regression curve. e
increase results from the spread of the species.
Economic cost of the Asian hornet invasion control 19
Discussion
As of today, nest removal remains the main strategy for eciently controlling the
yellow-legged hornet population. Indeed, even though European parasitic ies or
nematodes can infect V. velutina nigrithorax (Darrouzet et al. 2014; Villemant et al.
2015), they seem to have a limited impact on the species colony survival (Villemant
et al. 2015). Besides, intraspecic competition was shown to be unlikely as a potential
mechanism for population regulation (Monceau and iery 2017), so there is no indi-
cation that the rapid spread of the species in Europe will lessen if control strategies do
not improve and are not reinforced. Climate change may, on the contrary, worsen the
invasion in the near future (Barbet-Massin et al. 2013) and, therefore, the overall eco-
nomic costs. Nest removal thus currently remains the main strategy for controlling the
spread and the population density of the yellow-legged hornet and we suggest it should
be maintained or intensied (see below). It could also be combined with trapping
individuals with more selective traps and more selective attractant, in order to make
the control more ecient (Robinet et al. 2016). Successful case studies with Vespula
wasps suggest the possibility of toxic baiting for the control of V. velutina nigrithorax
(Kishi and Goka 2017), but further research is needed. As of today, the eort put into
nest removal is not sucient to prevent the spread of the species. Indeed, it has been
estimated that only an average of 30-40% of detected nests have been destroyed each
year in France (Robinet et al. 2016). e number of nests being destroyed does not
result from a control strategy aiming at destroying all or a given percentage of detected
nests, but rather from nests being destroyed because of their being potentially harm-
ful to human (nests close to human habitations) or beekeeping activities (nests close
to beehives). However, enforcing a control strategy that would aim at doubling the
number of nests destroyed – thus potentially doubling the estimated yearly cost of nest
destruction, to €23.8M if the cost per unit of control is constant- could reduce the
spread (rate of dispersal) of the species by 17% and its nest density by 29% (Robinet
et al. 2016). Further destroying 95% of the detected nests – thus tripling the estimated
yearly cost of nest destruction, to €35.7M – could reduce the species’ spread by 43%
and its nest density by 53%. Our study thus provides the rst estimates of the costs
for nest destruction following the yellow-legged hornet invasion. ese results can fur-
ther be used to estimate the costs/benets of dierent control strategies involving nest
removal. If a more systematic nest destruction is considered for better control of the
Table 1. Results of the four models tested the potential inuence of population and surface on
the cost of nest destruction.
Model Intercept Slope R2F df p-value
Cost~Population -6.49e30.39 0.97 303.2 8 1.2e-7
Cost~Surface 8767 28.6 0.88 61.32 8 5.09e-5
log(Cost)~log(Population) -1.23 0.99 0.86 54.3 8 7.82e-5
log(Cost)~log(Surface) 6.93 0.58 0.82 40.95 8 2.09e-4
Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. / NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
20
yellow-legged hornet invasion, public awareness campaigns need to be raised and nest
removal could be required by a country’s regulation. Furthermore, in order to reach a
higher percentage of nests being detected and localised, new detection techniques need
to be implemented.
As our cost estimates rely on scarce data, they therefore have to be interpreted with
caution. Although our data were concentrated in western France, there is no reason to
believe that the population – cost correlation would dier in another region. Despite a
low amount of data, we were able to detect a strong correlation between the cost of nest
destruction and human population within a given spatial unit. e cost of destroying a
nest can vary signicantly with local circumstances; but the quality of this correlation
tends to show that, for a minimum area, the aggregate cost is not aected by this vari-
ability (there is no spatial correlation of the cost heterogeneity). Given the standard er-
ror of the correlation coecient estimate, the condence interval around extrapolation
estimates should be ~10% of the extrapolated estimate. For example, the condence
interval for the estimated €11.9M yearly cost in France is €11.2M-€12.6M. e popu-
lation – cost correlation, found by the authors, is not that surprising, given that the
yellow-legged hornet was shown to favour urban and anthropised habitats (Franklin et
al. 2017; Fournier et al. 2017). Besides, a nest is most likely to be destroyed if it is close
to human habitations or activities, so it seems logical that larger numbers of nests are
destroyed in areas with higher population density.
For a better understanding of the costs/benets of dierent potential control strat-
egies, it will also be important to compare the costs of nest removal strategies with
the economic costs due to the negative impacts of the yellow-legged hornet, such as
a potential decrease in the beekeeping activity or a decrease in pollination services or
health costs. If the health costs are not currently available, the apiculture revenue was
€135M in France in 2015. Given that half of France is currently invaded by the yellow-
legged hornet, approximately 50% of this revenue can be at risk from the yellow-
legged hornet. If the invasive species were to cause a 5% decrease in honey production,
there would be an associated yearly cost of €3.3M. is is a broad estimate that would
require data regarding the spatial distribution of honey production and the impact of
the yellow-legged hornet on honey production to be rened. e yearly pollination
services to agriculture were estimated at €2 billion in France (Gallai et al. 2009), so,
if the yellow-legged hornet were to cause a 5% decrease in pollination services over
half the territory, there would be an associated yearly cost of €50M. Obviously further
research is needed to rene these estimates and, in particular, to assess the percentage
of honey production and pollination services aected, but comparing it to the yearly
€11.9M of nest destruction gives an idea about the order of magnitude of relative
costs of damage and damage prevention. If more stringent control measures aiming
at tripling the number of nests being destroyed were to be implemented, they would
still be less costly than the cost of potential damage to apiculture and agriculture if
the yellow-legged hornet causes more than a 5% decrease in honey production and in
pollination services.
Economic cost of the Asian hornet invasion control 21
Estimates of costs associated with surveillance or prevention would also be very
informative. Indeed, given the potential high costs associated with the yellow-leg-
ged hornet invasion to goods and services and given how dicult and costly it can
be to control it once well established, preventing the species introduction into new
countries will likely be less costly. We thus advise monitoring eorts to target areas
projected as climatically suitable, especially on islands such as the UK and Japan
(Robinet et al. 2016). Indeed, if the yellow-legged hornet were only observed a few
times in the UK, a rapid nationwide colonisation is possible, even from a single in-
vasive site (Keeling et al. 2017) and control would be less cost-eective than invasion
prevention for other regions in the country. Moreover, various records in new areas
took place in the vicinity of train station, port and airport cargo areas (e. g. north-
ern Parisian suburb train freight station in 2009 and airport in 2011, near Viana do
Castelo port, Portugal in 2011, Burela port in Galicia, Spain 2012, near Bristol port,
UK in 2016) suggesting that commercial transport also plays a signicant role for
long-distance spread and, above all, for the creation of new foyers of dissemination
and its impact on the spread of the invasive hornet must not be neglected. Moni-
toring eorts should, therefore, strongly focus on commercial and human transport
crossroads. Other countries, such as the US, Australia, Turkey and Argentina, appear
to be climatically suitable for the species, even if the yellow-legged hornet has not yet
been observed there. Given their distance to the native and current invasive range of
the species, it is unlikely that the species will disperse in these countries on its own.
However, given the estimated costs of damage related to nest destruction alone, it is
worth implementing surveillance programmes to prevent human-mediated dispersal
in these countries in order to avoid the high economic impacts of the yellow-legged
hornet if the species were to establish there.
Our study provides the rst estimates of economic costs resulting from the yellow-
legged hornet. We were able to estimate the cost of nest destructions – used to control
the spread of the species and limit its presence close to human habitations and activities
– and extrapolate these costs to all areas which are climatically suitable for the species.
Although more studies will be needed to estimate other costs related to the yellow-leg-
ged hornet invasion (in particular, the cost of its impact on apiculture and pollination),
the destruction of nests already cost €23M in France alone and a further €11.9M each
year at least, with a likely increase as the species keeps spreading.
Acknowledgments
is work was supported by the INVACOST project (ANR & Fondation BNP Pari-
bas), Biodiversa Eranet (FFII). We are most thankful to Quentin Rome, Claire Vil-
lemant and all persons and organisations that provided records of yellow-legged Asian
hornet nests in France and in Europe (their list is available on the INPN website). We
thank all persons who provided cost data regarding nest destructions.
Morgane Barbet-Massin et al. / NeoBiota 55: 11–25 (2020)
22
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