Increase in crop losses to insect pests in a warming climate

By C. Deutsch, J. Tewksbury, M. Tigchelaar, D. Battisti, S. Merrill, R. Huey, Rosamond L. Naylor. Science, 2018

1,151 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Warming, crops, and insect pests Crop responses to climate warming suggest that yields will decrease as growing-season temperatures increase. Deutsch et al. show that this effect may be exacerbated by insect pests (see the Perspective by Riegler). Insects already consume 5 to 20% of major grain crops. The authors' models show that for the three most important grain crops—wheat, rice, and maize—yield lost to insects will increase by 10 to 25% per degree Celsius of warming, hitting hardest in the temperate zone. These findings provide an estimate of further potential climate impacts on global food supply and a benchmark for future regional and field-specific studies of crop-pest-climate interactions. Science, this issue p. 916; see also p. 846 Models of insect population growth and metabolism in a warming climate predict losses of major food crops to insect pests. Insect pests substantially reduce yields of three staple grains—rice, maize, and wheat—but models assessing the agricultural impacts of global warming rarely consider crop losses to insects. We use established relationships between temperature and the population growth and metabolic rates of insects to estimate how and where climate warming will augment losses of rice, maize, and wheat to insects. Global yield losses of these grains are projected to increase by 10 to 25% per degree of global mean surface warming. Crop losses will be most acute in areas where warming increases both population growth and metabolic rates of insects. These conditions are centered primarily in temperate regions, where most grain is produced.

Subfields: Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d88953fa8ffb68ab6a3800387150035450ab682

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Insect Science

1. Brajesh Kumar Singh
2. M. Delgado‐Baquerizo
3. John S. Terblanche
4. A. Battisti

In Plant Science

1. Paolo D'Odorico
2. D. Ray
3. L. Rosa
4. James Gerber
5. A. Battisti

Citations in the corpus

• Climate change impacts on plant pathogens, food security and paths forward (2023, background): “There is emerging consensus that climate change will increase disease risk and pest impacts in many parts of the world 10,152 .”
• Complex responses of global insect pests to climate warming (2020, background): “…in crop damage caused by pests used a single generic model of insect physiological responses to warming, and projected increasing damage of key staple crops by insect pests (Deutsch et al. 2018); in addition, the authors predicted a greater proportional increase in crop damage at higher latitudes.”
• The Impact of Climate Change on Mental Health: A Systematic Descriptive Review (2020, background): “Famines can also be caused by abnormal insects’ populations and consequent increased use of pesticide or GMOs (37) with a change in biodiversity.”
• The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels (2022, neutral): “143,144 148 Exposure to high temperatures and extreme weather events reduces labour capacity, and 65% of all potential hours of labour lost globally occurred in the agricultural sector, with agricultural workers in low and medium HDI countries disproportionately affected (indicator 1.1.4).”
• Climate change has likely already affected global food production (2019, background): “Other related variables that could be considered in future global studies are radiation use efficiency changes [46], weed, pest and pathogen infestation changes [47], soil moisture variability on crop productivity [48–49] and other important biophysical changes to determine their relative contributi”
• The Impact of Climate Change on Agricultural Insect Pests (2021, background): “For rice grown in tropical zones, they predict a decrease in the growth of pest populations, and for maize grown in both temperate and tropical regions, mixed responses to the growth of pest populations could be expected [51].”
• Global food self-sufficiency in the 21st century under sustainable intensification of agriculture (2020, background): “Climate change will alter yields through changes in temperature, precipitation, insect pests, and atmospheric concentration of CO2 (Lobell and Gourdji 2012, Warszawski et al 2014, Deutsch et al 2018, Ostberg et al 2018).”