Combined Searches of Chinese Language and English Language Databases Provide More Comprehensive Data on the Distribution of Five Pest Thrips Species in China for Use in Pest Risk Assessment

Background: Globally, China and the USA are thought to present the greatest biosecurity threat from invasive species given the invasive species they already contain and their trade patterns. A proportion of Chinese scientific publications are published in Chinese language journals in Chinese characters, thus, they are not easily available to the international biosecurity community. Information in these journals may be important for invasive species biosecurity risk assessment. Methods: To assess the need for retrieving information from non-international databases, such as Chinese databases, we compared quantitative and qualitative information on the presence and distribution of five invasive pest thrips species (Frankliniella schultzei, Selenothrips rubrocinctus, Scirtothrips dorsalis, Thrips hawaiiensis, and Thrips palmi) in China, retrieved from an international English language database (Web of Science/WOS) and a Chinese language database (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure/CNKI). Such information is necessary for climate matching models which are used regularly for pest risk assessment. Results: Few publications on Frankliniella schultzei were found in either database. For the other species, more publications were sourced from CNKI than WOS. More publications on the provincial distribution of S. rubrocinctus and S. dorsalis in China were found in CNKI than the Crop Protection Compendium (CPC); the two sources had equivalent publications on T. palmi and T. hawaiiensis. The combined provincial distributional data from WOS, CNKI and CPC for the four species provided distribution records at a higher latitude than a recently published checklist-information that is important for optimised climate matching. Additionally, CNKI provided sub-provincial distributional data not available in CPC that will enable a more refined approach for climate matching. Data on the relative proportion of publications found in different databases were constant over time. Conclusions: This study, focusing on pest distributional data, illustrates the importance of searching in Chinese databases in combination with standard searches in international databases, to gain a comprehensive understanding of invasive species for biosecurity risk assessment.