Invasive species and global climate change.

Chapter 4 (Page no: 50)

Analysis of invasive insects: links to climate change.

Climate change is expected to alter the geographic distribution and abundance of many species, increase invasion of new areas by exotic species and lead to extinction of others. To address these issues, we must be able to examine prospectively the effects of climate change on species distribution and abundance. Commonly used ecological niche modeling (ENM) approaches attempt to characterize the ecological niche of species using aggregate weather and other factors in the areas of recorded distribution. In contrast, physiologically based demographic models (PBDMs) explicitly describe the biological and physiological responses of species to weather and species they interact with on fine temporal and spatial scales, enabling the model to be used to assess the geographic distribution and relative abundance in novel areas and under climate change. In PBDMs, weather is a mechanistic driver of, and not a statistical proxy for, biological processes. The geographic distribution and relative abundance of four invasive insect pests are reviewed under observed and climate model weather scenarios across the United States and Mexico: the tropical new world screwworm, pink bollworm, Mediterranean fruit fly (i.e. medfly) and the Asian citrus psyllid. Temperature increases will increase the distribution of screwworm and pink bollworm, reduce the geographic distribution of medfly in Central America but increase it along near-coastal areas of California, and alter the distribution of Asian citrus psyllid. The distribution of the Asian citrus psyllid is examined across the Mediterranean Basin to illustrate the transferability of the PBDMs to analyses of new regions and climate change scenarios. PBDMs are time-varying life tables.

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