Complex responses of global insect pests to climate warming  
Lehmann et al., 2020

Although it is well known that insects are sensitive to temperature, how they will be affected by ongoing global warming remains uncertain because these responses are multifaceted and ecologically complex. We reviewed the effects of climate warming on 31 globally important phytophagous (plant‐eating) insect pests to determine whether general trends in their responses to warming were detectable. We included four response categories (range expansion, life history, population dynamics, and trophic interactions) in this assessment. For the majority of these species, we identified at least one response to warming that affects the severity of the threat they pose as pests. Among these insect species, 41% showed responses expected to lead to increased pest damage, whereas only 4% exhibited responses consistent with reduced effects; notably, most of these species (55%) demonstrated mixed responses. This means that the severity of a given insect pest may both increase and decrease with ongoing climate warming. Overall, our analysis indicated that anticipating the effects of climate warming on phytophagous insect pests is far from straightforward. Rather, efforts to mitigate the undesirable effects of warming on insect pests must include a better understanding of how individual species will respond, and the complex ecological mechanisms underlying their responses.

Four major categories of responses to climate warming. (a) Range changes include range expansions or shifts (latitudinal or altitudinal). (b) Life‐history changes primarily consist of alterations to biological timing events or the number of annual generations. (c) Population dynamics reflect population size, and damage is expected to increase whenever temperature limits performance, but if threshold temperatures are reached, control and related feedback mechanisms may be triggered. T_present reflects current temperature fluctuations over a time period (eg a year or a day), whereas T_future reflects future temperatures over the same period. (d) Trophic interactions reflect temperature responses of organisms and trophic groups (plants = dashed green line, herbivores = solid red line, predators = dashed blue line). Because vital rates (ie rates of important life‐history traits, such as growth, dispersal, and reproduction) may vary, climate warming could strongly affect trophic relationships.  

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fee.2160
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