Invasive species are a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning worldwide. Invasive soil organisms are poorly studied, since soil taxa have often high species richness and puzzling taxonomy making the collection of distribution records challenging. Grounded on years of field experience and in-depth species knowledge, we propose terrestrial isopods as a model taxon to overcome practical issues impeding the study of invasive soil taxa. In North America, many non-native species exist that arrived with ballast soil in wooden ships during colonial times. The recent availability of terrestrial isopod trait data and high-resolution species records in Europe provide a firm foundation to investigate invasion success in North America using species distribution models (SDMs). We will compile historic species records, resurveys in colonial ports and citizen science data to build unique and state of the art SDMs. SDMs for northeastern North America will be produced using European data and compared to SDMs based on actual distribution records from North America. The comparison of the model outputs enables to infer the species’ invasion status and invasion predictability which we can link to species traits and environmental variables. Comparative molecular analysis of native and introduced populations will further deepen our understanding of introduction and colonization routes. Finally, we will model past and future land use and climate to understand invasion success.