Insect Resilience and Climate Change

Ecosystem tipping points and climate change warning signs are making headlines. Yesterday I read record breaking heat is melting roads in some of India's busiest cities. Scientists predicted a rise in temperature would lead to an increase in the number of insects worldwide, ushering dire consequences to the farming community. Warnings unheeded to our own detriment as now one of Africa's staple crops, cassava, is reeling from super bug infestation. In short climate change has already altered earth's ecological footprint with unstable fluctuating seasons. A longer season means insects have a higher metabolic rate, quicker gestation and more frequent reproduction. According to an EPA report titled Lyme Disease - Climate Change Indicators In the US stated "Between 1991 and 2013 lyme disease cases doubled". An accelerated pine weevil population growth is attacking Canada's boreal forest, British Colombia, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Nebraska, throughout Central America and even the coast of Georgia. The April 2015 National Geographic Pine Beetle Epidemic article stated "The scale of the current epidemic is unprecedented. Since the 1990s more than 60 million acres of forest, from northern New Mexico through British Columbia, have suffered die-offs from pine weevil infestation". This statement does not take into account pine weevil damage throughout Latin America. I recently witnessed first hand the devastating impact of pine weevil insurgence during a Zika mitigation t...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news