Live reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade

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