Climate-driven evolution of pest life-histories are identified as an amplifier of agricultural losses and suggest that current projections may significantly understate the threat warming poses to future food security.
Abstract
Climate change influences the physiology and population dynamics of ectothermic pests, with major repercussions for global crop production. Yet, how evolution modulates these outcomes remains unclear. We exposed the widespread beetle pest Callosobruchus maculatus to 10 years of experimental evolution at different temperatures and quantified thermal responses of life-history traits. Hot- and cold-adapted populations evolved differences in thermal sensitivity, but these were modest relative to evolved differences in trait averages. By leveraging high-resolution temperature time-series we show that the observed evolution translates into cold-adapted genotypes having highest fitness in cold climates and hot-adapted genotypes in warm climates. Hot-adapted beetles maximize fitness in warm climates by increased larval growth, resulting in larger body sizes and higher fecundity. This evolutionary strategy compounds projected crop losses under warming by increasing both intrinsic population growth and per-capita host consumption rates. By year 2100 under intermediate-to-high warming (SSP3-7.0), pest evolution is projected to increase global crop damage potential by +113% from present—twice that expected from warming alone (not accounting for evolution). In major crop-producing areas, where temperatures and the beetles’ host consumption rates are already high, warming increases average crop damage potential by +29%, but evolution amplifies this three-fold to +87%. Evolution also expands C. maculatus’ projected colonizable range and in some regions even flips forecasted crop damage reductions into increases. These results identify climate-driven evolution of pest life-histories as an amplifier of agricultural losses and suggest that current projections may significantly understate the threat warming poses to future food security.
Rising global temperatures, shifting precipitation regimes, and elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide are altering the geographic ranges, phenology, and population dynamics of insect pests that damage the world's major food crops. This review synthesises evidence on the physiological mechanisms, observed range shifts, and projected redistribution of agriculturally important insect species under contemporary and future climate scenarios. Poleward and altitudinal expansions have already been documented across multiple pest taxa, with average latitudinal displacement rates in the low single-digit kilometres per year, and modelling studies project further acceleration under mid- and high-emission trajectories. Case evidence from fall armyworm, cotton leafworm, maize stemborers, and several rice pests illustrates how thermal tolerance, developmental plasticity, and host-plant availability jointly determine the pace and direction of range change. Elevated carbon dioxide modifies host-plant nutritional and defensive chemistry in ways that can either suppress or, in some circumstances, enhance herbivore performance, complicating simple temperature-based forecasts. Economic assessments indicate that warming-driven increases in insect-mediated crop losses could reach double-digit percentage increases per degree Celsius for staple cereals, disproportionately affecting temperate breadbasket regions, while invasive insects already impose costs exceeding tens of billions of US dollars annually worldwide. Species distribution modelling, mechanistic niche models, and hybrid approaches are increasingly used to anticipate these shifts, though model uncertainty, incomplete occurrence data, and neglect of biotic interactions remain persistent limitations. The review closes by identifying priority research directions, drawing overall conclusions for policy and practice, and acknowledging the methodological limitations inherent to a narrative synthesis of a rapidly evolving evidence base.
Omprakash Tetarwal, Rajendra Ghanswa, Nemichand Chopra et al.· Journal of global agricultur...· 0 citations
Climate change is fundamentally altering the distribution, prevalence, and severity of plant pests and pathogens, posing an unprecedented challenge to global food security. Rising global temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and the increased frequency of extreme weather events are accelerating biological cycles, expanding the geographical range of thermophilic pests, and creating new ecological niches for emergent diseases. This paper analyzes the mechanisms by which climate-driven environmental stressors influence host-pathogen interactions, specifically focusing on the physiological susceptibility of crops and the adaptive capacity of agricultural pests. We explore how warmer winters facilitate the overwintering of populations, leading to earlier and more intense seasonal infestations. Furthermore, we examine how elevated atmospheric $CO_2$ levels alter plant nutritional quality and defensive pathways, potentially rendering crops more vulnerable to herbivory and infection. The analysis highlights the expansion of pest ranges into previously temperate zones and the disruption of biological control mechanisms as synchronized life cycles between pests and their natural enemies become decoupled. As climatic volatility increases, the management of crop health requires an urgent shift toward proactive, climate-smart surveillance systems and adaptive agricultural strategies. By synthesizing current epidemiological and ecological data, this paper provides a framework for understanding the cascading impacts of climate change on agro-ecosystems and emphasizes the necessity of integrated, landscape-level disease and pest management to sustain productivity in a rapidly warming world.
Research Author· European Journal of Food, Fa...· 0 citations
Climate change exposes populations to multiple stressors simultaneously, yet our understanding of how the addition of one stressor alters adaptation to another remains poor. As a result of climate change, high-latitude coastal habitats are experiencing rapid salinity decline, resulting in serious impacts on food webs and ocean circulation. Here, we examine how temperature increase impacts adaptation to salinity decline, in terms of the speed, genomic response, and repeatability of adaptation. We performed replicated Evolve-and-Resequence experiments over 20 to 25 generations in the model copepod Eurytemora carolleeae (Atlantic clade of the E. affinis species complex). Under salinity decline alone, replicate selection lines exhibited a polygenic response involving 66 selected haplotype blocks, with increasing parallelism among the replicate lines through Generation 20. Fitness (egg number) declined sharply over the first four generations but underwent full Evolutionary Rescue, recovering to ancestral levels by Generation 10. In contrast, imposing temperature increase on the salinity decline lines resulted in significantly lower parallelism among the selection lines, along with delayed and incomplete Evolutionary Rescue. Only 14% of selected SNPs were shared between the two selection regimes, and Gene Ontology analyses revealed largely distinct functional categories of genes under selection. These results show that adding warming to salinity decline can alter the genomic trajectory of salinity adaptation, slowing and impeding Evolutionary Rescue, and reducing the repeatability of polygenic responses. Our findings have direct implications for predicting evolutionary responses to realistic, multi-stressor climate change in high-latitude coastal ecosystems experiencing simultaneous ocean freshening and warming.
Zhenyong Du, A. Taylor, Lydia Larsen et al.· bioRxiv· 0 citations
Stored-product insects threaten global food security, yet the environmental mechanisms governing their responses to climate change remain poorly understood. Existing pest distribution projections rarely integrate diurnal thermal variability with agricultural land use. Here, we show that diurnal thermal variability, together with agricultural land use, is a major determinant of habitat suitability for three globally important Callosobruchus pests across the Middle East. Using optimized species distribution models integrating climate, topography, and cropland under contrasting CMIP6 climate scenarios, we demonstrate that mean diurnal temperature range and cropland consistently emerge as the strongest predictors across all species, revealing the importance of daily thermal fluctuations beyond mean warming alone. Under the low-emission scenario (SSP1-2.6), suitable habitat by mid-century expands substantially for C. chinensis and C. phaseoli, while remaining little changed overall for C. maculatus, for which comparable local expansion and contraction largely offset one another; under the high-emission scenario (SSP5-8.5), gains are reduced, and localized contractions occur, particularly for C. chinensis and C. maculatus, the latter shifting to a slight net loss in total suitable area. Persistent climatic refugia remain along Mediterranean and Red Sea coastal regions, whereas habitat losses are concentrated in the northern Gulf lowlands and Zagros foothills. Our findings identify diurnal thermal variability as an overlooked dimension of stored-product pest ecology and show that integrating agricultural landscapes with climate projections can improve forecasts of future pest risk, providing a framework for climate-informed surveillance, biosecurity, and adaptation.
Rasha K. Al-Akeel, M. Soliman, A. Alkhaibari et al.· Agriculture· 0 citations
Climate change is increasing drought and heat stress in European forests, raising concerns about the capacity of long-lived tree species to respond to rapidly changing environmental conditions. While local adaptation has been documented in many forest trees, it remains unclear whether newly established seedlings, which form the forests of the future, are able to persist and adapt to these new climatic conditions. Here, we investigated genomic differences between naturally regenerated seedlings and trees of European beech (Fagus sylvatica) across the three regions of the German Biodiversity Exploratories using low-coverage whole-genome sequencing (∼5x) of 1,032 individuals. Population structure was primarily driven by geographic region, whereas genetic diversity was similar across life stages. Despite this genome-wide similarity, we detected allele frequency shifts between trees and seedlings, concentrated in narrow genomic windows. These shifts were strongest in surviving seedlings, suggesting that environmental filtering during early establishment may contribute to shaping the genetic composition of regenerating populations. The strongest signals were observed within the Swabian Alb, where sampled seedlings were 2-years old and had experienced a longer period of potential filtering prior to sampling. Genotype–environment association analyses identified loci associated with climatic variables, and subsequent GO enrichment analyses of genes linked to these loci revealed significantly more enriched GO terms in seedlings than in trees, suggesting stronger environmental filtering by the current climate in seedlings. In particular, we found associations with maximum air temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture, and precipitation, affecting genes involved in stress responses, growth, metabolism, and developmental processes. Together, our results demonstrate that young cohorts of European beech differ genetically from trees and reveal genomic patterns consistent with life-stage-dependent environmental filtering. These findings suggest that the genetic composition of early life-stages is already altered by current environmental conditions, possibly contributing to adaptation to new climatic conditions.
Climate change is altering plant population dynamics by increasing drought frequency and intensity in many regions. The climatic niche (i.e. the range of climatic conditions under which a species persists) offers a powerful framework to link the effects of climate on population performance with species‐specific tolerances. However, how the population's position within its species' climatic niche influences population fitness remains poorly understood. We investigated demographic responses to climatic niche position in two Mediterranean shrubs, Halimium halimifolium and Lavandula stoechas, following an extreme drought in Doñana National Park (SW Spain). Using individual demographic data from 2019 to 2022, we modelled survival, growth and reproduction as functions of distance to each species' climatic niche centroid and of drought‐induced vegetation die‐off. We then integrated these vital rates into integral projection models (IPMs) to assess population growth. We found that proximity to the niche centroid increased population growth, especially for H. halimifolium. In contrast, L. stoechas exhibited a more complex pattern, with population growth peaking near the niche centroid but remaining high farther away. These patterns were driven mainly by increased recruitment near the niche centroid, together with reduced seedling survival, suggesting demographic compensation. In both species, small shifts in niche position within the observed range led to substantial demographic changes. Importantly, vegetation die‐off further modulated demographic responses to niche position. Population growth in H. halimifolium was highest at moderate die‐off, likely balancing facilitation and competition. In contrast, L. stoechas reached its highest population growth under high die‐off, possibly due to competitive release. Perturbation analysis pointed out that changes in population growth in L. stoechas were driven mainly by the influence of niche position on early life‐stage processes, especially recruitment and seedling survival, whereas in H. halimifolium they were mainly influenced by adult survival and growth responses to niche position. Synthesis. Our results show that population fitness is shaped by climatic niche position, with higher fitness generally closer to their niche centroid. Niche metrics capture species‐specific climatic tolerances and requirements; by incorporating them into demographic models, we can better assess population responses to climatic variability across species and ecosystems.
Teresa Sánchez-Mejía, Maria Paniw, Francisco Lloret· Journal of Ecology· 0 citations
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