Monday, September 01, 2014

How Will Global Warming Impact Common Pest Insects?

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that century-old museum specimens hold clues to how global climate change will affect a common insect pest that can weaken and kill trees – and the news is not good.

"Recent studies found that scale insect populations increase on oak and maple trees in warmer urban areas, which raises the possibility that these pests may also increase with global warming," says Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt, a research associate at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work.

"More scale insects would be a problem, since scales can weaken or kill the trees they live on," Youngsteadt says. "But cities are unique, so we wanted to know whether warming causes scale insect population explosions in rural forests, the way it does in cities."

No comments: