Horizon scan of online plant trade reveals emerging invasive species and high-risk platforms
A multi-year scan of 11 e-commerce platforms flags high-risk plant species and platforms for future invasive species monitoring.
By Jacob Maher, Oliver C. Stringham, John Virtue, Phillip Cassey in Research
January 1, 2026
Abstract
Online plant trade is a growing pathway for the introduction and spread of invasive species, but ongoing monitoring across the many platforms involved is limited. We used automated web scraping to capture snapshots of online plant trade across 11 Australian e-commerce websites between 2020 and 2023, identifying 3,822 species for sale. We categorized these species by their Australian regulatory, naturalisation, and native status to flag species posing emerging invasion risk, and identified the platforms carrying the highest concentration of high-risk listings — providing a prioritized target list for future monitoring and intervention.
- Posted on:
- January 1, 2026
- Length:
- 1 minute read, 93 words
- Categories:
- Research
- See Also:
- Identifying recent captive escapees of Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus) at different stages of the pet-release pathway
- The pet trade of native species outside of their natural distributions within Australia is a biosecurity risk
- Discrepancies in Australian jurisdiction-based regulation of invasive plants