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Member Symposium

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Plants, Insects, Microbes: Who Is the Key Driver of Interaction Outcomes in Agricultural Ecosystems?

LeafHope: Leveraging insect-bacteria-plant interactions to stop insect vectors Invasions and emerging plant diseases

Wednesday, November 8, 2023
2:45 PM - 3:00 PM ET
Location: Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Chesapeake G-H
In-Person
A critical turning point has emerged in the current climate crisis, demanding the full utilization of our resources to halt the advance of global warming and its catastrophic consequences. Agriculture, globally ranked among the top five economic sectors, is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 8 to 10% of total emissions in Canada and the United States. The escalation of pest invasions, a consequence of global warming, threatens food security in the typically cold northern hemisphere and exacerbates agriculture's impact on climate change by necessitating heightened pesticide usage. This paper examines the multifaceted effects of climate change on agriculture, particularly focusing on leafhoppers—an insect pest group and disease vectors. To test this hypothesis, leafhoppers in strawberry fields located in eastern Canada, were evaluated. Here, we found that in the last ten years, the number of leafhoppers has been increasing in correspondence with the number of plants affected by diseases transmitted by leafhoppers, although the leafhopper diversity has been seriously affected. Our model showed that their abundance is influenced by temperature, a factor that we found also influences the insect microbiome. We also found that the insecticides used by strawberry growers can’t control leafhopper incidence, which could be linked to microbiome changes induced by changing temperatures. All these results are the base of LeafHope, a project that will use leafhoppers ecology and biology to stop further biological invasions, emergent insect-transmitted diseases, understand climate change-induced insecticide resistance and to find biological alternatives to control these insect pests.