Phylogeny and Functional Traits Jointly Shape Global Rice Pest Invasions

Biological invasions by crop pests increasingly threaten global food security, yet the mechanisms underlying invasion success remain poorly understood, particularly within focal crop systems. Here, we examined how evolutionary history and species traits jointly shape rice pest invasions using a global dataset of 129 rice pests. We reconstructed a COI-based phylogeny, compiled ten functional traits, and analyzed invasion status using Bayesian phylogenetic and non-phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models. Invasive rice pests were non-randomly distributed across the phylogeny, with more than 50% of species in Aphididae, Gryllotalpidae, and Noctuidae being invasive. Most functional traits showed phylogenetic signal, whereas invasion status exhibited a weaker but still non-random phylogenetic pattern. Incorporating phylogeny improved model performance, with phylogenetic effects explaining more variation than measured traits alone. After accounting for phylogenetic dependence, fecundity remained the strongest positive predictor of invasion status, whereas host number, body length, and migration distance showed weaker directional trends. These findings show that rice pest invasions are jointly shaped by phylogenetic background and functional traits, and provide a basis for phylogeny-informed risk screening and biosecurity management.