Climate Change and Agroecosystem Pest Dynamics: A Critical Narrative Review of Impacts on Insect Pests, Their Natural Enemies, and Implications for Crop Protection
Jul 2026· Uttar Pradesh Journal of Zoology· 0 citations
Abstract
Climate change is altering the physiology, phenology, distribution and interaction networks of agricultural insect pests and the natural enemies that regulate them, yet the literature addressing these changes remains fragmented across disciplines and taxa. This critical narrative review synthesises evidence on how rising temperatures, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, altered precipitation and increasing climatic variability affect insect pests and their predators, parasitoids and entomopathogens in agricultural systems, and evaluates the resulting implications for crop protection. Warming generally accelerates insect development, increases voltinism and extends the geographical range of many pest species, while its effects on natural enemies are more variable and frequently negative, owing to a combination of lower thermal optima among parasitoids relative to their hosts, disrupted phenological synchrony, and altered chemosensory cues that impair host or prey location. Elevated carbon dioxide most often reduces host-plant nitrogen content, prompting compensatory feeding by herbivores, with inconsistent consequences for third-trophic-level performance. Case evidence from the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda, bark beetle outbreaks in coniferous forests, desert locust plagues linked to Indian Ocean climate variability, and cereal aphid–parasitoid systems illustrates convergent patterns of pest release alongside marked context-dependency. Meta-analytic evidence indicates that predators continue to suppress pests and support yield across a range of climates, and that landscape complexity can buffer biological control against climatic variability, offering a partial counterweight to the more pessimistic single-species findings. Methodological heterogeneity, including short experimental durations, single-factor manipulations, and geographic concentration of research in temperate systems, limits confidence in generalising current findings to tropical and subtropical smallholder systems where food security risks are often greatest. Research priorities include multifactorial and multigenerational experiments, standardised reporting of thermal and moisture regimes, and expanded evidence from under-represented regions and cropping systems. The review concludes that climate change is reshaping the balance of tritrophic interactions in ways that generally favour pests over their natural enemies, but that this outcome is neither universal nor immutable, and that landscape-scale conservation of natural enemy diversity is among the more defensible adaptive strategies currently supported by evidence.
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
Global food systems face a convergence of pressures from climate variability, biodiversity loss and the diminishing returns of pesticide-intensive crop protection. This review synthesises current evidence on agroecological plant protection as a pathway toward climate-resilient agriculture, focusing on three interlinked pillars: biodiversity-based pest suppression through crop and landscape diversification, biological control networks operating across trophic levels and spatial scales, and soil-mediated plant defense mediated by rhizosphere microbiota and mycorrhizal symbioses. Evidence from meta-analyses generally indicates that plant diversification can reduce herbivore pressure and enhance natural enemy abundance, although outcomes are moderated by landscape context, herbivore guilds and management intensity. Landscape complexity supports natural enemy communities more reliably than it suppresses pest populations outright, revealing a persistent gap between biodiversity conservation and realised pest control. Soil microbiomes and mycorrhizal fungi prime systemic defense pathways that operate independently of, and synergistically with, aboveground biological control, offering a belowground dimension of resilience that has been comparatively underexploited in mainstream pest management. Climate change is simultaneously reshaping pest phenology, range and voltinism, intensifying the urgency of ecologically grounded alternatives to systems heavily reliant on chemical control. The review identifies persistent knowledge gaps around scaling farm-level diversification to landscape and regional levels, mechanistic understanding of soil–plant–insect feedback loops under warming and drought, and the socio-economic barriers that slow farmer adoption of agroecological practice. It concludes that durable climate resilience in plant protection will depend on integrating these three pillars within regionally adapted, multi-scale management frameworks rather than treating them as independent technical fixes.
Omprakash Tetarwal, Nemichand Chopra, Rajendra Ghanswa et al.· Journal of Agriculture and E...· 0 citations
Mangrove ecosystems of the Neotropics occur across the Caribbean, Central America, northern South America, Brazil, and southern Florida and support diverse insect assemblages that contribute to pollination, herbivory, decomposition, predation, parasitism, and nutrient cycling. Climate change represents an increasingly important driver of change in these systems because it alters both the physical environment occupied by insects and the biological interactions on which many insect populations depend. This review synthesizes literature on the potential and documented impacts of increasing temperature, altered precipitation, drought, sea-level rise, salinity change, tidal modification, hurricanes, and other extreme climatic events on insects associated with neotropical mangrove ecosystems. Particular attention is given to insect-mediated pollination because evidence from Rhizophora mangle, Avicennia germinans, and Laguncularia racemosa demonstrates that insect activity, flowering phenology, mating systems, and mangrove reproductive success are closely interconnected. The available literature indicates that climate change may affect mangrove insects through direct physiological mechanisms, including altered metabolism, development, survival, and reproduction, and indirectly through changes in mangrove distribution, habitat structure, floral resources, hydrology, salinity, and species interactions. A major concern is phenological mismatch, whereby climatic changes alter the timing of insect emergence or activity differently from mangrove flowering. Extreme disturbances may also restructure insect communities rapidly; hurricane-associated reductions in pollinator richness and diversity in Florida mangroves provide an important analogue for understanding the ecological consequences of increasingly intense climatic disturbances. However, direct climate-change studies focused specifically on neotropical mangrove insects remain scarce. Existing knowledge is concentrated on a limited number of mangrove species and locations, while many taxa, particularly small Diptera, solitary Hymenoptera, herbivores, detritivores, parasitoids, and immature insects, remain poorly documented. The review concludes that climate impacts on mangrove insects should be understood as interacting pathways linking climatic exposure, insect physiology, mangrove phenology, habitat transformation, and ecological networks. Long-term, species-level, climate-linked monitoring is urgently needed, particularly in under-studied neotropical regions such as the Caribbean and northern South America.
Lakhnarayan Kumar Bhagarathi· International Journal of Mul...· 0 citations
Pest damage continues to undermine food security and farmers’ livelihoods across East Africa, yet a comprehensive synthesis of its cascading ecological and socioeconomic consequences is lacking in the literature. Climate change, through rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and recurring droughts, is fundamentally altering pest behaviour and distribution across the region, driving a phenomenon here described as pest invasion: the climate-driven process by which previously contained pests break out of their historical boundaries, colonise new elevations and seasons, and destabilise the ecological relationships that once kept their populations in check. This review therefore aimed to: (i) analyse the impact of climate change on pest dynamics in East Africa, including shifts in distribution and phenology; (ii) examine the ecological consequences of pest proliferation on ecosystem structure and function; (iii) assess the socioeconomic implications for livelihoods and food security; and (iv) evaluate adaptive and area-wide pest management strategies. A qualitative narrative review synthesised peer-reviewed literature (2015-2025) from Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and JSTOR, screened for empirical rigour, geographic focus, and thematic relevance. Evidence shows that invasive pests, including fall armyworm, desert locusts, false codling moth, and Prosopis juliflora, are generating compound burdens of biodiversity loss, yield reduction, and pesticide dependence, disproportionately borne by smallholder farmers, particularly women. Area-wide integrated pest management emerges as an essential response, yet adoption remains constrained by weak policy frameworks, limited extension capacity, and insufficient regional coordination. The review concludes that climate-resilient, gender-responsive, and regionally coordinated pest management systems are essential for long-term food security and ecological sustainability in East Africa.
Asuman Adala, G. Lubega, Susan Natsite et al.· African Journal of Agricultu...· 0 citations
Plantation crops such as coffee, cocoa, tea, oil palm, natural rubber, banana, coconut and sugarcane underpin the rural economies of much of the tropical and subtropical world, yet their long production cycles and comparatively narrow climatic tolerances make them acutely exposed to a changing climate. This review synthesises and critically evaluates evidence on how rising temperature, altered rainfall, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide and shifting biotic pressures are affecting these crops, and asks whether the literature supports a coherent account of vulnerability and adaptive capacity across such a heterogeneous group of species. Evidence was drawn from open-access and publisher-indexed peer-reviewed journals, institutional sources, and citation searching of recent reviews. Three broad conclusions emerge. First, thermal and hydrological stress already constrain yield and quality in several crops, with effects that are frequently non-linear around genotype-specific optima rather than simple linear declines. Second, elevated carbon dioxide confers a measurable but contested physiological benefit that interacts with, and in some cases partially offsets, warming and drought stress; the magnitude of this offset varies sharply between short-duration controlled experiments and field-scale, water-limited conditions, and carries consequences for crop quality that are distinct from its effects on biomass. Third, species distribution and process-based models converge on a general poleward and upslope redistribution of both crops and their associated pests and pathogens, although the two modelling traditions disagree substantially on magnitude and, in the case of cocoa, on the direction of projected change once carbon dioxide fertilisation and land-use constraints are incorporated. Agroforestry and shade management emerge as the most consistently supported agronomic adaptation strategy, buffering microclimatic extremes, although the net effect on resilience is contingent on soil water availability and on the forward-looking climatic suitability of the shade species selected. The evidence base is markedly uneven across crops, with coffee and cocoa disproportionately represented relative to rubber, coconut, tea, oil palm, banana and sugarcane. The review identifies priority needs for longitudinal, multi-decadal field trials that combine elevated carbon dioxide with realistic water limitation, for process-based models capable of separating suitability from harvestable yield, and for expanded physiological research on the least-studied plantation crops.
Gayatri D. Bhuyan, Plabita Saikia, R. P. Bhuyan et al.· Journal of Advances in Biolo...· 0 citations
Global surface temperatures have risen significantly over the past several decades, leading to an increased frequency of extreme heat events that threaten global food security and crop physiological stability. While macroclimatic data provide broad environmental trends, the health and productivity of crops are more directly governed by the microclimate, especially environmental conditions including temperature, humidity, and radiation within the cropping systems. This review explores the importance of microclimate modification as a resilient approach to mitigate the combined impacts of elevated temperatures and biotic stressors. Higher temperatures directly impair critical reproductive processes, such as pollen viability and grain filling, while simultaneously accelerating the metabolic rates and reproductive cycles of insect pests and enhancing the virulence of various pathogens. We categorize microclimate management into two primary strategies: protected cultivation and vegetative modification. Protected structures, such as greenhouses and shade nets, offer high-precision control over thermal and moisture variables while providing physical barriers against pests. Nature based vegetative interventions, including intercropping, agroforestry, and shelterbelts, utilize shading and transpiration cooling to buffer thermal extremes and enhance biodiversity. By modulating canopy temperature, humidity, and airflow, these modifications reduce the risk of pest proliferation and disease outbreaks while optimizing water-use efficiency. Integrating microclimate management with resistant crop varieties and sustainable pest control is essential for developing resilient agricultural systems capable of sustaining productivity in an increasingly unpredictable or extreme climate.
Pooja R, Sendhilvel V, N. K. Sathyamoorthy et al.· Genetics and Molecular Resea...· 0 citations