Foreward:

Craig Phillips
Better Border Biosecurity, New Zealand

The abstracts given here make up the talks for a symposium on Defending National and Internal Borders against Invasive Insects held at the 2008 International Congress of Entomology in Durban, South Africa.

The all day symposium described trade-quarantine and incursion-response measures, which have traditionally had to look to pest management research for support, and are now benefiting from a more direct focus of research on border biosecurity. Indeed, knowledge from border biosecurity research is beginning to flow back the other way, and is providing valuable spin-off benefits for pest management; this was particularly apparent in the sessions on Detection and Diagnostics and Incursion Response.

A second feature of border biosecurity research that was clearly evident at the symposium was the diversity of scientific disciplines and technological approaches required to help limit the spread of unwanted species into new regions. The presentations included new approaches to computation and modelling, electronic data capture, risk assessment, host range testing, diagnostics, surveillance and eradication.

Most threats from invading species are pests in another country, and this symposium showed the importance of greater international cooperation. As David Nowell reinforced in his keynote address, preventing the spread of unwanted species demands the implementation of management measures that are integrated across regional, national and international scales. The authors of the presentations were from ten countries, including representatives of both hemispheres. The coordinators hope that this symposium will encourage stronger awareness and better collaboration between countries in the future.