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FEATURE | November 10, 2022

Climate Change Can Put More Insects at

Risk for Extinction

This NASA visualization shows global temperature anomaly (changes from an average) data from 2017 to 2021. Higher-than-normal temperatures are shown in red, and
lower-than-normal are shown in blue. Projected changes in temperature variability will increase the extinction risk of insects such as Stomoxys calcitrans, a biting fly that
feeds on the blood of livestock and humans. Credit: NASA

From NASA's Ames Research Center

In Brief:
A new analysis shows temperature fluctuations are an important
factor in insect extinction risk.

New NASA research models are shedding light on how insect

populations may respond to severe changes in temperature that are
likely climate change. In a study recently published in Nature Climate
Change, scientists found that 65% of the insect populations they
examined could go extinct over the next century.

Insects perform many important roles in Earth's ecosystems. They

assist with the production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers through
pollination. They decompose organic matter. They even help control
harmful pests. But there are gaps in our understanding of how insects
and ecosystems will respond to climate change.

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“We needed a modeling tool to understand how insect populations will

be affected by variations in temperature,” said Dr. Kate Duffy, a former
postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in
California’s Silicon Valley. “And that’s what we aimed to offer with this
study: a more direct and accurate way for scientists to understand this
dynamic."

Duffy and other scientists used advanced models to explore how cold-
blooded insect populations would respond to projected temperature
changes over the next century. The research group found that 25 of 38
insect species they studied could face increased extinction risk over
the next century, particularly due to dramatic and erratic temperature
swings in their local environments.

Scientists expect climate change to negatively affect biological diversity

— the amount of variation found in the genes, species, and
ecosystems on Earth. Maintaining diversity is essential for human
health, food security, clean air and water, and for millions of agricultural
jobs worldwide. Understanding which species may be most at risk
could allow conservationists to more accurately target efforts to combat
losses of diversity.

Many previous studies have relied on the relationship between average

temperatures and species health to inform statistical models of climate
impacts on species attributes (such as their distribution or abundance).
But such models can be sometimes erroneous because the
relationship between temperatures and species performance is
complex — with many factors coming into play — and few models
properly account for fluctuations in temperature.

To gain a more detailed view of how temperature changes will affect

insect populations, Duffy and colleagues integrated climate projections
from the World Climate Research Program, data about how insects
perform at different temperatures, and mathematical models — what
scientists call “dynamic modeling.” This approach is unique because it
integrates climate projections with existing insect temperature
response models to yield insect population projections. Previous
studies provided insight into the growth rate of insect populations, but
they haven’t before scaled models to the population level.

Their analysis showed that due to extreme changes in temperatures,

65 percent of the 38 populations studied could face an increased risk of
extinction over next 50 to 100 years. Temperature changes are
particularly threatening for cold-blooded insects because the creatures
lack mechanisms to regulate their body temperature during drastic
temperature swings.

"The ecological and data-driven models in this study could enable

more accurate predictions of ecological response than we've ever had
before and inform more targeted strategies for helping species adapt to
climate change,” said Auroop Ganguly, a researcher at Northeastern
University and a co-author on the paper.

This research was primarily funded by grants from the National

Science Foundation, with additional support from the Department of
Defense. Duffy led this study while supporting the NASA Earth
Exchange team at Ames and while pursuing her doctorate at
Northeastern University. She recently co-founded Zeus AI, a NASA
Small Business Innovation Research-funded startup using machine
learning for weather forecasting.

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