Insect Communities Threatened by Climate Change: Potential for Widespread Chaos

As organisms evolve and take different paths, new species continue to emerge worldwide. But what happens when climate change is introduced to the equation?

That is the subject of investigation for Thomas H.Q. Powell, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and his lab. They recently published a study titled “Contrasting effects of warming in diverging insects” in Ecology Letters.

In the 1850s, the apple maggot fly, a major agricultural pest, began to diverge into two populations in the Hudson Valley. One group continued to reside on the fruit of the region’s native hawthorn trees, while the other adapted to a new food source: apple trees, which were originally brought to North America by English colonists.

“The entomologist who discovered this actually corresponded with Darwin about it potentially being an example of the origin of species in real time. It wasn’t until the system was picked back up by researchers in the late 20th century that we found out he was right,” Powell explained.

Hawthorns bear fruit three to four weeks later than apple trees, causing a shift in the reproductive schedules of the two fly populations. As a result, several species of parasitic wasps that feed on the maggot fly are affected, highlighting the delicate balance within ecosystems.

For their experiment, the researchers raised populations of flies and parasitic wasps that depend on apples or hawthorns under current climate conditions from the past decade, as well as warmer conditions projected 50 to 100 years into the future. The findings have significant implications for insect biodiversity, according to Powell.

Although the two fly populations are in the same location, they responded differently to the temperature shift. The hawthorn-dwelling flies displayed greater resilience, possibly due to greater genetic diversity. The life cycle of the apple flies became out of sync with their host plant, making their survival uncertain and potentially halting the process of speciation.

However, the heat did not affect the life cycles of the parasitic wasps, which could have dire consequences if they become unsynchronized with the life cycles of their prey.

While natural adaptation may eventually restore balance in disrupted systems, rapid evolution faces significant constraints. Habitats are often smaller and fragmented, limiting the genetic variability necessary for organisms to respond to changing environmental pressures.

“Climate change not only disrupts evolution through potential breakdown of this classic speciation story but also impacts the susceptibility of flies to climate change due to their rapid evolution,” Powell remarked.

“Therefore, if we observe completely different effects of future conditions, even on identical flies from the same habitat that have been evolving since the 1800s, we may witness widespread chaos in the timing of insect communities in the coming decades.”

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