Invasive alien plants reduce ecosystem service delivery, resulting in environmental, economic and social costs. Here we review the returns on investment from biological control of alien plants that invade natural ecosystems. Quantifying the economic benefits of biological control requires estimates of the reductions in ecosystem goods and services arising from invasion. It also requires post-release monitoring to assess whether biological control can restore them, and conversion of these estimates to monetary values, which has seldom been done. Past studies, mainly from Australia and South Africa, indicate that biological control delivers positive and substantial returns on investment, with benefit:cost ratios ranging from 8:1 to over 3000:1. Recent studies are rare, but they confirm that successful biological control delivers attractive returns on investment, which increase over time as the value of avoided impacts accumulates.

外来入侵植物减少了生态系统服务的提供，从而导致环境，经济和社会成本。在这里，我们回顾了入侵自然生态系统的外来植物的生物控制所产生的投资回报。量化生物防治的经济利益需要估算由于入侵而造成的生态系统商品和服务减少量。它还需要进行释放后监测，以评估生物控制是否可以恢复它们，并将这些估计值转换为货币价值，这很少进行。过去主要来自澳大利亚和南非的研究表明，生物防治可带来积极而可观的投资回报，效益与成本之比范围从8：1到3000：1以上。最近的研究很少，