Séminaire Ecobio - Bingxin Wang (Ecobio)

The effects of climate change on crop yield often involve abiotic and biotic factors such as temperature, humidity, and interaction between pests or pathogens and their host crops. My main question of this project is how climate change impact staple crops through changes in pests and pathogens.
I utilized modelling techniques (e.g. species distribution models, joint species distribution models, etc.) to explore potential effects of climate change on pests and pathogens of staple crops including wheat (Triticum aestivum), rice (Oryza sativa), maize (Zea mays) and soybean (Glycine max), which are the most cultivated crop worldwide and suffer considerable annual yield loss due to pests and diseases. First, I reviewed the existing work of impact of climate change on wheat and rice, and its pests and pathogens. Second, I inferred the likely distribution of the Sitobion grain aphid complex in the face of climate change. Third, I created multi-species distribution maps that depict potential future hotspots and coldspots of crop pathogens and insect pests and revealed cooccurrence patterns in agro-ecosystems that have important ramifications for optimal control strategies. Fourth, I predicted changes in the global distribution of insect pest community richness and composition under two climate scenarios: one with low emissions and less warming, and one with high emissions and greater warming.
I expected that my findings will improve our understanding of how interactions between various biotic and abiotic factors shape the distribution and abundance of species in the face of climate change.