10: The next generation of biosurveillance: How modern genetic techniques identified populations and modeled the spread of Halyomorpha halys

As the number of exotic species introductions continues to rise, the need for early detection, rapid response, and source detection becomes an ever-increasing priority. While efforts have been made to address these priorities, limitations to the traditionally used methods resulted in ambiguous findings for source detection and less than optimal detection of incipient populations. However, modern genetic techniques and analyses have allowed for increased detection sensitivity of target species. For instance, environmental DNA (eDNA) has been shown to have significantly greater detection sensitivity over traditional methods that rely on capture or visualization of exemplary specimens. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) uses genetic data to statistically compare invasion pathway models and ascertain the most likely routes of invasion. Here I present on two projects where I use each of these to detect incipient populations of Halyomorpha halys and ascertain its global spread. We found that eDNA was able to detect a population of H. halys when blacklight traps and pheromone traps failed to do so, and our ABC models more precisely estimated the global invasion pathways that resulted in its global establishment.