1. Human visitors are associated with the unintended dispersal of weeds, seeds and pathogens across ecological communities. With the increasing popularity of nature‐based tourism, access to protected areas has increased, in turn increasing the risks of unintended dispersal of exotic species to these areas.
2. Here, we assess the potential contribution of both international and domestic visitors travelling within New Zealand to the spread of exotic species. To get an overview of the visitors’ travelling patterns across the country, we constructed visitation networks at two spatial scales—a regional scale (which is a coarse scale) and a local territorial scale (which is a finer scale).
3. We then used a Mixed Membership Stochastic Block Model to identify characteristic groups of visitors and places based on the similarities of the visitors’ travelling patterns across the country. Overall, we found that there are 10 characteristic groups of visitors travelling to 12 characteristic groups of places at the regional scale and 6 characteristic groups of visitors travelling to 6 characteristic groups of places at the territorial scale.
4. The resulting characteristic travelling patterns of the visitors across New Zealand further allowed us to estimate the different visitor groups’ likelihood to travel to protected areas. Overall, we found that some visitor groups are much more likely than others to travel to protected areas of high protection status, at both spatial scales.
5. Synthesis and applications. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for human behaviour—that is, understanding how visitors travel to places—when assessing human‐mediated dispersal. More specifically, we illustrate how to assess the relative contribution of a potential vector dispersing exotic species based on their travelling patterns—especially in cases where the target exotic species are not yet identified or when there is limited information regarding the dispersal routes of exotic species and their potential vectors. As a result, our work offers a holistic perspective on human‐mediated dispersal of exotic species. Moreover, it provides a potential baseline against which both field biologists and practitioners can identify areas that would benefit from further investigation to better understand invasion processes in their focal systems.

中文翻译：

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使用访问网络评估意外的人为传播

1. 人类来访者与杂草，种子和病原体在生态群落中的意外传播有关。随着基于自然的旅游业的日益普及，进入保护区的机会也增加了，反过来又增加了将外来物种意外散布到这些地区的风险。
2. 在这里，我们评估了在新西兰旅行的国际和国内游客对外来物种传播的潜在贡献。为了大致了解游客在全国的旅行方式，我们在两个空间尺度上构建了访问网络：区域尺度（较粗略的尺度）和地方领土尺度（较细的尺度）。
3. 然后，我们使用混合成员随机区组模型，根据游客在全国各地旅行方式的相似性来识别游客和地点的特征人群。总体而言，我们发现有10个特征访问者前往区域规模的12个特征组，而6个特征访问者前往区域规模的6个特征组。
4. 由此产生的新西兰各地游客的特征性旅行方式进一步使我们能够估计不同游客群体前往保护区的可能性。总体而言，我们发现，在两个空间尺度上，一些游客群体比其他游客群体更有可能前往具有高度保护地位的保护区。
5. 综合与应用。我们的结果强调了在评估以人为媒介的传播时，考虑到人类行为的重要性，也就是说，了解访问者如何前往地方。更具体地说，我们说明了如何根据其传播方式评估潜在载体散布外来物种的相对贡献，尤其是在尚未确定目标外来物种的情况下，或者在有关外来物种的传播途径的信息有限的情况下。他们的潜在载体。因此，我们的工作为人类介导的外来物种扩散提供了一个整体视角。此外，它提供了潜在的基线，野外生物学家和从业人员都可以以此为基础确定可以从进一步研究中受益的领域，以更好地了解其焦点系统中的入侵过程。