Acquisition SPRINGER

Abstract

A common complication in invasive pest
management is that the infectious state of the host can
be wrongly assessed, leading to biases in the estima-
tion of the prevalence of the pest and on the efficacy of
mitigation actions. We designed a multievent model
that accommodates uncertainty on host state to
investigate the dynamics of the infestation ofPhoenix
canariensisby the invasiveRhynchophorus ferrug-
ineus. Since 2011, the council of Palma city (Mallorca
Island, Spain) applied preventive, curative and
destructive treatments to publicPhoenixpalms. A
year later awareness campaigns focused on every palm
owner in an attempt to control the plague. We
estimated the probability of infestation and assessed
the efficiency of mitigation measures, awareness
campaigns and palm-dependent covariates. Our
results show that infestation probabilities were higher
for palms infested in the previous year than for healthy
palms and it decreased substantially over time as a results of mitigation measures and awareness cam-
paigns. Palms surrounded by treated palms had a lower
probability of being infested than palms surrounded by
untreated palms, i.e. private palms before awareness
campaigns implementation. Our results highlight the
key role of awareness campaigns and public partici-
pation for invasive species control.