Recently, the Economic Crop Pest Monitoring and Control Innovation Team at the Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IPPCAAS), in collaboration with multiple domestic and international institutions, published a review article titled  Crop pest responses to global changes in climate and land management  in  Nature Reviews Earth & Environment  (5-year IF=54.6). This review clarifies the ecological mechanisms by which major global change drivers influence agricultural pests, delineates response patterns of temperate pests, tropical pests, migratory pests, and soil-dwelling pests to global changes, reveals trends in how wheat, rice, maize, and soybean pests respond to climate and land use shifts, proposes adaptive pest forecasting and control strategies under global environmental changes, and outlines future research directions for crop pest management in the context of global change. The findings provide critical guidance for developing science-based pest control strategies to address food security challenges in a changing world.  

For the past few years, global crop pest infestations have intensified, posing severe threats to food production and agricultural economies. Understanding how pest populations and distributions respond to global changes is essential for food security. By synthesizing worldwide research and data on pest responses to climate and land use changes, the review highlights that climate change, land use transitions, and agricultural intensification collectively drive pest expansion and outbreaks, leading to significant crop yield losses. Under global warming, pests are expanding their geographic ranges, experiencing earlier phenological shifts, and increasing annual generations, exacerbating crop damage. These trends are particularly pronounced in mid to high-latitude regions, where warming-induced pest responses may result in heavy agricultural losses. Extreme weather events further complicate pest dynamics: moderate droughts can intensify pest feeding for water acquisition, while increased precipitation may alleviate temperature-humidity extremes and promote pest outbreaks. 

Human activities also amplify pest risks. Land reclamation and deforestation degrade ecosystems, weakening natural biocontrol functions and increasing crop vulnerability to pests. Agricultural intensification, particularly widespread fertilizer and irrigation use, enhances crop yields but simultaneously improves host plant quality for pests and buffers them against environmental stressors, creating favorable conditions for pest proliferation. Meanwhile, expanding global trade networks facilitate the invasion of non-native pests. To address these challenges, the review emphasizes the need to strengthen pest monitoring and prediction systems for timely responses to pest-driven agricultural crises. It also advocates exploring sustainable pest management strategies, such as conservation biological control, climate-smart pest management technologies, and precision agriculture, as critical research priorities for safeguarding global food security.  

This work provides a theoretical and data-driven framework for agricultural pest management under global climate change. By analyzing pest responses to climate and land use changes, the research identifies latent risks to agricultural production and offers key guidance for formulating science-based pest management policies and strategies.  

Professor Chunsen Ma from Hebei University is the first author of the paper. Associate Researcher Gang Ma from CAAS, along with former CAAS Ph.D. graduates Bingxin Wang, Xuejing Wang, and Qingcai Lin, are co-corresponding authors. Contributing authors include Associate Researcher Wei Zhang (CAAS), Professor Xuefang Yang (Hebei University), Professor Joan van Baaren (University of Rennes, France), Professor Daniel P. Bebber (University of Exeter, UK), Professor Sanford D. Eigenbrode (University of Idaho, USA), Professor Myron P. Zalucki (University of Queensland, Australia), and Researcher Juan Zeng (National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center).  

The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32330090, 32471597, 32401314), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFD1400400, 2023YFD1401400), the Hebei Provincial Natural Science Foundation (C2022201042), the National Agricultural Long-Term Factor Observation Program (CALTON-SWZH), the CAAS Agricultural Basic and Long-Term Research Initiative (Y2024JC02), and the Sino-French IRP “GRADIENTS” project (French National Centre for Scientific Research). 

Figure 1: Impacts of global change drivers on crop pests and agricultural productivity.

Figure 2: Global changes in climate, land use, and agricultural practices.

Figure 3: Effects of global environmental changes on major crop pests. 

Figure 4: Responses of four major crop pests to global changes across regions.

Figure 5: Impacts of climate warming on major crop pests. 

Figure 6: Responses of wheat, rice, maize, and soybean pests to climate warming.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00652-3