Protecting urban and forest trees with impact predictions: The i-Tree Pest Predictor Tool

Not all arriving non-native insects will be high impact on our forest and urban trees. Yet, knowing which invading insects might cause high impact can inform priority surveillance at ports-of-entry and increase efficiency of preventative management. The online i-Tree Pest Predictor (iTPP) tool, https://pestpredictor.itreetools.org/, allows users to explore the predicted risk of high impact for non-native herbivorous insects on trees of North America, should the insect arrive and establish. The iTPP tool is based on quantitative impact models that use information on an insect’s taxonomy, feeding guild, region and climate of the native range, and host trees in the native range. The tool assesses this information and calculates the host breadth for each insect to assign it to the correct quantitative model for impact risk calculations. With the appropriate input data, the iTPP tool can be used to assess a non-native insect’s risk of being high impact on over 50 North American conifer and 360 hardwood species. We have used the tool to calculate impact scores for over 300 tree-feeding insects native to Europe that could be potential invaders to North America. In our presentation, we demonstrate how these risk scores can be used to understand the threat to North American trees and ecosystems if a high-impact insect were to arrive and establish.