PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 49: Climate and Vegetation Dynamics
Tuesday, August 9, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 520 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Climate change and the fate of cereal aphids.

Newman, Jonathan¹, ¹ Dept. of Environmental Biology, Guelph, ON, Canada

ABSTRACT- Climate change will drive dramatic changes in the abundance and distribution of species. Assessing the impacts of climate change on our agricultural systems is essential for mitigation planning. Here I combine climate projections from the UK Hadley Centre's HadCM3 climate model with a general mechanistic model of the interaction between climate, temperate grass physiology and cereal aphid population dynamics. Aphids are one of the largest and most important groups of crop pests and disease vectors worldwide, but particularly in temperate regions. For the Southern UK, the model predicts an increasingly dramatic decline in aphid abundance as CO₂ emissions increase. For Canadian wheat producing regions, the model predicts similar results, but there is great geographic variability and some regions may experience dramatic increases in cereal aphid abundance.

Key words: elevated CO2, aphids, model, carbon dioxide enrichment