From the laboratory to the field: Warming temperatures do not consistently exacerbate pest pressure across 38 agricultural arthropod species

A growing body of literature warns that climate warming will reduce the abundance and efficacy of insect natural enemies while promoting the growth of pest populations. However, comprehensive empirical support for these predictions are lacking, and some recent studies demonstrate that climate warming actually has mixed effects on agricultural insects depending on various factors such as geographic location. Despite these findings, the effects of warming on biocontrol agents and their target pests remain largely unknown, and the dominant narrative remains: warming temperatures will exacerbate pest problems. To address this knowledge gap, we applied an ecoinformatics approach, whereby long-term data collected in agricultural systems for pest management were repurposed for scientific research. We collated several data streams across California and Spain gathered by independent pest control advisors, and analyzed a subset of the data comprising 38 insect species, six crops, and over 127,834 field-years of detailed observations on insect populations. We show that insect species display extremely variable responses to year-to-year and site-to-site temperature variation. In this talk, we will also share preliminary results of our follow-up analyses exploring if insect traits can explain these widely varied responses. Our study ultimately aims to answer why some insects respond positively to warming temperatures while others respond negatively, building the foundation for a predictive, trait-based framework that informs integrated pest management as the climate warms.