A mechanistic approach to predicting the ecological and evolutionary consequences of environmental change

环境的快速变化影响了害虫与其天敌（捕食者、寄生虫）之间的相互作用。攻击作物的害虫会造成伤害，但寄生害虫的昆虫是有益的，因为它们提供了杀虫剂的替代品。地球仪的温度上升使有害昆虫受益，同时也伤害了有益昆虫，增加了害虫爆发的风险，从而危及国家的粮食供应。因此，了解物种如何承受和适应不断变化的温度是一个关键的研究重点。该项目将提供博士后，研究生和本科生水平的培训，其中一个关键方面是理论和数据的整合，以解决具有重大社会应用的科学问题。通过开发能够预测气温上升对生物虫害防治影响的模型，该项目将直接有助于改进现有的虫害综合管理方法。该项目将发展理论和实验，以阐明昆虫和其他外温动物对短期（驯化）和长期（适应）温度变化的反应机制。理论部分涉及开发数学模型，明确纳入发展的时间延迟，其特点是复杂的生命周期的外温动物。我们的目标是了解这种延迟是如何影响害虫和天敌的驯化和适应温度变化，包括平均温度的增加以及温度波动的大小。该项目的经验部分涉及使用昆虫群落测试模型预测，该昆虫群落具有许多害虫-敌人相互作用的特征，因此可以作为研究温度升高如何影响生物害虫控制功效的模型系统。这些实验的一个新方面是，通过在受控的环境室中监测昆虫种群，它们将允许在真实的时间内观察驯化和适应。理论和数据的紧密结合产生的结果不仅可以解释过去温度的升高如何影响一般的物种相互作用，特别是害虫-敌人的相互作用，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

Rapid environmental changes influence the interactions between insect pests and their natural enemies (predators, parasites). Pest insects that attack crops cause harm, but insects that parasitize pests are beneficial because they provide an alternative to pesticide use. Rising temperatures across the globe are benefiting harmful insects while harming beneficial ones, increasing the risk of pest outbreaks that can compromise the nation’s food supply. Understanding how species withstand and adjust to changing temperatures is therefore a critical research priority. The project will provide training at postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate levels, a key aspect of which is the integration of theory and data to address scientific problems that have significant societal applications. Through the development of models that can forecast the effects of rising temperatures on biological pest control, this project will directly contribute to improving existing methods of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). This project will develop theory and experiments to elucidate the mechanisms by which insects and other ectotherms respond to temperature changes in the short term (acclimation) and the long-term (adaptation). The theoretical component involves developing mathematical models that explicitly incorporate the developmental time delays that characterize the complex life cycles of ectotherms. The goal is to understand how such delays influence acclimation and adaptation of pests and natural enemies to temperature changes involving both an increase in the mean temperature as well as the size of temperature fluctuations. The empirical component of the project involves testing model predictions using an insect community that shares many features of pest-enemy interactions and thus serves as a model system for investigating how rising temperatures influence the efficacy of biological pest control. A novel aspect of the experiments is that they will allow observations of acclimation and adaptation in real time, through the monitoring of insect populations in controlled environmental chambers. The tight integration of theory and data serves to yield results that can not only explain how past increases in temperature influence species interactions in general and pest-enemy interactions in particular, but also to predict how future increases will influence biodiversity and pest control.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.