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Special Collection
Introduction to the Collection: Climate Change, Insect
Pests, and Benefcial Arthropods in Production Systems
Sanford D. Eigenbrode,
1,4,
Subodh Adhikari,
1,
Erica Kistner-Thomas
2,
and Lisa Neven
3,
1
Department of Entomology, Plant Pathology and Nematology, University of Idaho, 875 Perimeter Drive MS 2329, Moscow, ID 83844,
USA,
2
Institute of Food Production and Sustainability, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, 805 Pennsylvania Avenue, Kansas
City, MO 64105, USA,
3
USDA-ARS, Temperate Tree Fruit and Vegetable Research Unit, 5230 Konnowac Pass Road, Wapato, WA
98951, USA, and
4
Corresponding author, e-mail: sanforde@uidaho.edu
Subject Editor: Matt Hudson
Received 25 June 2022; Editorial decision 25 June 2022.
Abstract
Climate change is expected to alter pressure from insect pests and the abundance and effectiveness of insect
pollinators across diverse agriculture and forestry systems. In response to warming, insects are undergoing
or are projected to undergo shifts in their geographic ranges, voltinism, abundance, and phenology. Drivers
include direct effects on the focal insects and indirect effects mediated by their interactions with species at
higher or lower trophic levels. These climate-driven effects are complex and variable, sometimes increasing
pest pressure or reducing pollination and sometimes with opposite effects depending on climatic baseline
conditions and the interplay of these drivers. This special collection includes several papers illustrative of these
biological effects on pests and pollinators. In addition, in response to or anticipating climate change, producers
are modifying production systems by introducing more or different crops into rotations or as cover crops or
intercrops or changing crop varieties, with potentially substantial effects on associated insect communities,
an aspect of climate change that is relatively understudied. This collection includes several papers illustrating
these indirect production system-level effects. Together, biological and management-related effects on insects
comprise the necessary scope for anticipating and responding to the effects of climate change on insects in
agriculture and forest systems.
Keywords: climate change, crop protection, crop pollination
Climate change is expected to alternate pressure from insect pests
and how they are managed (Bjorkman and Niemela 2015, Skendžić
et al. 2021). Warming can alter insect physiology, phenology, repro-
duction, development, and survival (Bale et al. 2002), generally with
the potential to cause increases in pest abundance, feeding, and se-
verity (Deutsch et al. 2018). Warming can also extend or shift the
geographic range of pests polewards (Aragón and Lobo, 2012,
Bebber 2015, Zhao et al. 2022) and increase voltinism (Stoeckli et
al. 2012, Ziter et al. 2012) enhancing their potential to injure crops
and forest trees. Projections for increased pest severity with climate
change, however, are not straightforward because whether warming
increases pest severity depends upon the temperature optima of pest
species (Deutsch et al. 2018). Precipitation can further modify the
effects of warming (Crossley et al. 2022), and species interactions
can be altered in complex ways (Eigenbrode et al. 2015, Hill and
Thomson 2015, Eigenbrode and Macfadyen 2017, Macfadyen et al.
2018). Indeed, observed responses of pests to warming are variable,
with severity of specifc pests declining or increasing with warming
(Lehmann et al. 2020). Thus, anticipating effects of warming
necessitates study of pest species individually, a substantial challenge.
Similar complexities come into play with effects of changing climate
on benefcial arthropods such as pollinators, their abundance, di-
versity, and phenological alignment with the crops they pollinate
(Bartomeus et al. 2011, Donnelly et al. 2011, Scaven and Rafferty
2013, Potts et al. 2016, Gonzalez et al. 2021).
In addition to these multifaceted effects of climate change on the
biology of pests and benefcial arthropods, but largely overlooked,
are the complications introduced by farming or management
practices adopted to adapt to climate change or mitigate agriculture’s
effects on climate through GHG emissions. Agricultural adaption
is needed to mitigate climate change impacts, avoid global food
production failures, and ensure food safety (Anderson et al. 2020,
Journal of Economic Entomology, 115(5), 2022, 1315–1319
https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toac107
Invited Article
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