Live animal smuggling presents a suite of conservation and biosecurity concerns, including the introduction of invasive species and diseases. Yet, understanding why certain species are smuggled over others, and predicting which species will be smuggled, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we compared the live reptile species illegally smuggled to Australia (75 species) to the legal trade of live reptile species in the United States. Almost all smuggled species were found in the legal US pet market (74 species), and we observed an average time lag of 5.6 years between a species first appearing in the United States and its subsequent detection in Australia. Using a Bayesian regression model, species popularity in the United States, and internationally, were positively associated with smuggling probability to Australia. Our findings give insight to the drivers of illegal wildlife trade and our predictive modelling approach provides a framework for anticipating future trends in wildlife smuggling.

中文翻译：

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合法外来宠物贸易的趋势预测活爬行动物走私

活体动物走私带来了一系列保护和生物安全问题，包括引入入侵物种和疾病。然而，了解为什么某些物种被走私而不是其他物种，以及预测哪些物种将被走私，仍然相对未探索。在这里，我们将非法走私到澳大利亚的活体爬行动物物种（75 种）与美国活体爬行动物物种的合法贸易进行了比较。几乎所有走私的物种都在美国合法的宠物市场（74 种）中发现，我们观察到从一个物种首次出现在美国到随后在澳大利亚被发现之间的平均时间差为 5.6 年。使用贝叶斯回归模型，物种在美国和国际上的流行度与走私到澳大利亚的概率呈正相关。