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Computational Ecology and Software, 2011, 1(3): 138-145
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Article

Improving cluster-based methods for investigating potential for insect pest species establishment: region-specific risk factors

Michael J. Watts1 , Susan P. Worner2
1School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, SA 5005, Australia
2Bio-Protection Research Centre, Lincoln University, PO Box 84, Lincoln 7647, New Zealand

Received 9 May 2011; Accepted 7 June 2011; Published online 1 September 2011
IAEES

Abstract
Existing cluster-based methods for investigating insect species assemblages or profiles of a region to indicate the risk of new insect pest invasion have a major limitation in that they assign the same species risk factors to each region in a cluster. Clearly regions assigned to the same cluster have different degrees of similarity with respect to their species profile or assemblage. This study addresses this concern by applying weighting factors to the cluster elements used to calculate regional risk factors, thereby producing region-specific risk factors. Using a database of the global distribution of crop insect pest species, we found that we were able to produce highly differentiated region-specific risk factors for insect pests. We did this by weighting cluster elements by their Euclidean distance from the target region. Using this approach meant that risk weightings were derived that were more realistic, as they were specific to the pest profile or species assemblage of each region. This weighting method provides an improved tool for estimating the potential invasion risk posed by exotic species given that they have an opportunity to establish in a target region.

Keywords data clustering; k-means clustering; invasive insect pests; regional species assemblages.


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