A big data approach to characterizing impacts of climate warming on agricultural arthropod populations

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 30 insect species, six crops, and over 127,834 field-years of detailed observations on insect populations. In our initial analyses, insects at different trophic levels display variable responses to year-to-year and site-to-site temperature variation. In this talk, we will also describe how our study ultimately aims to answer why some insects respond positively to warming temperatures while others respond negatively, and build the foundation for a predictive, trait-based framework that informs integrated pest management as the climate warms.