Regardless of their ecosystem functions, some
insects are threatened when facing environmental changes
and disturbances, while others become extremely successful.
It is crucial for successful conservation to differentiate factors
supporting species
’
current distributions from those triggering
range dynamics. Here, we studied the sudden extralimital
colonization of the rose chafer beetle,
Oxythyrea funesta
,in
the Czech Republic. Specifically, we depicted the range ex-
pansion using accumulated historical records of first known
occurrences and then explained the colonization events using
five transformed indices depicting changes in local propagule
pressure (LPP), climate, land use, elevation, and landscape
structure. The slow occupancy increase of
O. funesta
before
1990 changed to a phase of rapid occupancy increase after
1990, driven not only by changes in the environment (climate
and land use) but also by the spatial accumulation of LPP.
Climate was also found to play a significant role but only
during the niche-filling stage before 1990, while land use
became important during the phase of rapid expansion after
1990. Inland waters (e.g., riparian corridors) also contributed
substantially to the spread in the Czech Republic. Our method
of using spatially transformed variables to explain the coloni-
zation events provides a novel way of detecting factors trig-
gering range dynamics. The results highlight the importance
of LPP in driving sudden occupancy increase of extralimital
species and recommend the use of LPP as an important
predictor for modeling range dynamics
