A peer-reviewed open-access journal NeoBiota 23: 17–64 (2014)A biography of an invasive terrestrial slug, Deroceras invadens 17 doi: 10.3897/neobiota.23.7745 RESEARCH ARTICLE NeoBiota http://neobiota.pensoft.net/ Advancing research on alien species and biological invasions A biography of an invasive terrestrial slug: the spread, distribution and habitat of Deroceras invadens John M.C. Hutchinson1, Heike Reise1, David G. Robinson2 1 Senckenberg Museum of Natural History at Görlitz, Am Museum 1, 02826 Görlitz, Germany 2 USDA APHIS PPQ National Malacology Laboratory, Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Franklin Parkway, Phila- delphia, PA 19103, USA Corresponding author: John M.C. Hutchinson (
[email protected]) Academic editor: Ingolf Kühn | Received 17 April 2014 | Accepted 10 June 2014 | Published 2 September 2014 Citation: Hutchinson JMC, Reise H, Robinson DG (2014) A biography of an invasive terrestrial slug: the spread, distribution and habitat of Deroceras invadens. NeoBiota 23: 17–64. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.23.7745 Abstract The article reviews distribution records of Deroceras invadens (previously called D. panormitanum and D. caruanae), adding significant unpublished records from the authors’ own collecting, museum samples, and interceptions on goods arriving in the U.S.A. By 1940 D. invadens had already arrived in Britain, Denmark, California, Australia and probably New Zealand; it has turned up in many further places since, including remote oceanic islands, but scarcely around the eastern Mediterranean (Egypt and Crete are the exceptions), nor in Asia. Throughout much of the Americas its presence seems to have been previously overlooked, probably often being mistaken for D. laeve. New national records include Mexico, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, with evidence from interceptions of its presence in Panama, Peru, and Kenya.