A recent assessment of the research effort into the role of indirect and direct drivers of change in nature facilitating invasive alien species concluded that the current knowledge is limited, and focuses on tractable drivers over those that require an interdisciplinary approach, with bias towards developed economies (Hulme, 2022). Between 2000 and 2020, 27,462 peer-reviewed journal articles were published addressing biological invasions of which less than 5,000 (or 18 per cent) examined the role of one or more drivers of change in nature. In contrast, out of a corpus of 110,087 research papers targeting biodiversity and ecosystem services, almost 40,000 (or 36 per cent) described the role of one or more drivers. Thus, the drivers affecting biological invasions remain less understood compared to other areas of conservation science.
Research on drivers of change in nature facilitating biological invasions reflects a strong bias towards direct drivers with only a small fraction of studies addressing indirect drivers (Hulme, 2022). While there have been calls for increased interdisciplinarity in the study of biological invasions, the percentage of articles addressing indirect drivers of change in nature has shown no significant increase over the last two decades, leading to an increasing bias in articles towards direct drivers of change in nature (Hulme, 2022). Drivers deemed likely to be important for biological invasion by invasive alien species, such as governance and direct exploitation of natural resources, were shown to be poorly supported by research effort. The considerable literature addressing national and international policies for conserving biodiversity (Le Preste, 2017) is not matched by similar studies tackling the governance of problems arising from invasive alien species(Hulme, 2021a).