Abstract

We monitored the hitchhiker insect pests from the international vessels entering into Korea in 2021. As a result, total of 581 individuals were detected by the survey based on visual inspection with naked eye. Among them, 500 individuals were identified as 244 species of 65 families under 11 orders through the integrative taxonomic method with DNA barcoding and morphological reexamination, but the remaining 81 individuals were classified as only to the family level. Of the 244 species identified, 26 species were determined to be not-distributed species in Korea (two Orthoptera, two Hemiptera, one Megaloptera, five Coleoptera, three Hymenoptera, and 13 Lepidoptera). Among them, two species, Sagra femorata (Chrysomelidae, Coleoptera) and Dendrolimus punctatus (Lasiocampidae, Lepidoptera), were discovered as ‘Regulated species’ listed by Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency, South Korea. Therefore, we reported on the 26 not-distributed species in Korea and provided inanimate pathway information such as navigation routes on the vessels hitchhiking the species, state of the samples at the time of detection, identification results and original distribution for the detailed monitoring and the risk analysis on the species.