Editorial: Pests on the move: climate change and the shifting ecology of forest insects

Introduction

Climate change is reshaping forest ecosystems by altering temperature regimes, precipitation patterns, disturbance processes, and interactions between insects and their host trees. Among the most dynamic and consequential biological responses are the shifts in geographic range, seasonal phenology, voltinism, overwinter survival, and outbreak dynamics of forest insects (Pureswaran et al., 2018). These changes affect both native and non-native pests and pose increasing challenges to forest health, biodiversity, carbon storage, and timber production. Importantly, climate change interacts with drought, host physiological stress, disturbance history, landscape structure, and other environmental pressures to determine the severity and spatial extent of insect impacts (Anderegg et al., 2015; Simler-Williamson et al., 2019). To address these emerging challenges, this Research Topic, “Pests on the Move: Climate Change and the Shifting Ecology of Forest Insects,” compiles seven pioneering articles, including original research, reviews, and perspectives, that bridge macro-scale ecological modeling, micro-scale chemical ecology, and landscape-level forest management. This editorial integrates and synthesizes these contributions to outline a holistic, multi-scale framework for understanding and managing forest insects in a warming world. Such integration is increasingly necessary if forest protection is to move beyond responses to established outbreaks toward anticipating where, when, and under what ecological conditions future pest risks are most likely to emerge.

Macro-scale distribution dynamics and invasive forest pests

Understanding the pathways and spatial redistribution of forest insects is paramount for pest monitoring and management. Ramakrishnan et al. provide a comprehensive review of ecosystem intruders and examining the biological, environmental, and anthropogenic drivers that shape successive stages of insect invasion, from transport and introduction to establishment and spread. Their synthesis highlights invasion as the outcome of complex interactions among species-specific traits, environmental conditions, host availability, and human-mediated dispersal. In particular, phenotypic plasticity and tolerance to climatic stress may facilitate establishment under novel environmental conditions, while climate-induced changes in host physiology can alter forest susceptibility to invading insects. These ecological processes are further intensified by expanding global trade and transportation networks, which facilitate long-distance introductions and contribute to the continued spread of forest pests beyond their native ranges.

Predicting these range expansions requires complex modeling frameworks that translate current climate projections into future habitat suitability regions. Underpinning this effort, Mahanta et al. apply the MaxEnt species distribution model to map the potential distribution of the teak defoliator, Hyblaea puera, a highly destructive pest of Tectona grandis plantations worldwide. By integrating current occurrence patterns with future climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), their model identifies temperature seasonality as the dominant climatic driver controlling habitat suitability. Under the high-emission Shared Socio-economic Pathway scenario (SSP5-8.5), the model projects a net expansion of suitable habitat exceeding 820,000 km², accompanied by an approximate doubling of high-suitability core regions by the end of the century, highlighting a severe, emerging risk of outbreaks across tropical teak-growing landscapes. This demonstrates the value of climate-informed distribution models for directing future monitoring and preparedness.

Similarly, Yang et al. utilize an advanced ensemble modeling approach (integrating multiple algorithms via Biomod2 package) and n-dimensional hypervolume analysis to investigate the distributional and niche dynamics of two major wood-boring pests in China: the citrus longhorned beetle (Anoplophora chinensis) and the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis). While both species currently exhibit substantial overlap in suitable habitats across central and southeastern China, future climate projections suggest a decline in habitat overlap, leading to spatial divergence and ecological differentiation. Their hypervolume analysis reveals that A. glabripennis possesses broader climatic adaptability (a larger ecological hypervolume) with greater tolerance to diurnal temperature ranges and precipitation seasonality. Such environmental flexibility suggests that A. glabripennis may expand more rapidly toward higher-latitude regions, underscoring the necessity of species-specific quarantine planning and surveillance in emerging risk areas.

Micro-scale mechanisms: chemical ecology and multitrophic interactions

Beyond macro-scale habitat shifts, climate change influences the subtle chemical languages mediating insect behavior and their symbiotic communities. Bark and wood-boring beetles rely extensively on pheromones and host and non-host volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to locate suitable breeding material and coordinate colonization. Bláha et al. shed light on this chemical dialogue by examining the beech bark beetle Taphrorychus bicolor. Using electrophysiological (GC–EAD) and behavioral field assays, they demonstrate that non-host plant volatiles, particularly conifer-derived compounds associated with Norway spruce (Picea abies), can profoundly disrupt the beetle's attraction to its aggregation pheromone. Their findings provide a biochemical foundation for developing effective push-pull pest management strategies, suggesting that the natural regeneration of mixed forests or the strategic accumulation of non-host logging residues can act as potential repellent cues to reduce infestation pressure on host beech stands.

Simultaneously, the ecological success of forest beetles is tightly linked to their complex networks of symbiotic organisms. Cilbircioglu presents a comprehensive study on phoretic mites (Acari: Mesostigmata) associated with three economically important bark beetles-Ips sexdentatus, Ips acuminatus, and Tomicus piniperda in Kastamonu forests of northern Turkey. By documenting numerous new regional records and demonstrating how mite abundance, diversity, and species composition vary among different beetle hosts, this study underscores the complexity of multitrophic saproxylic communities. Understanding these intricate interactions is essential for developing sustainable, environmentally sound biological control strategies, as some of these phoretic mites may act as potential biological control agents or directly influence bark beetle colonization success. Moreover, the study reinforces the need to consider forest pests as components of ecological networks rather than in isolation.

Landscape management and technology-driven surveillance

Mitigating the escalating impacts of forest pests requires a fundamental transition in both silvicultural paradigms and technological tools. Historically, monoculture forestry has offered high short-term economic yields but has remained highly vulnerable to catastrophic biotic disturbances. Johnson et al. address this critical economic-ecological trade-off through a bioeconomic comparison of monoculture and polyculture forestry under changing disturbance risk. Their stylized modeling framework identifies an important threshold response. While monocultures remain profitable under low disturbance risks, forest diversification (transitioning to a mixed-species polyculture) becomes the economically optimal strategy once the probability of a pest outbreak crosses a critical threshold. In this context, polycultures provide a crucial hedge against severe pest outbreaks by diluting host concentration and increasing trophic complexity, thereby enhancing forest resilience and stabilizing timber values in a volatile climate.

Effective implementation of such strategic management changes requires foresters to utilize real-time, high-precision detection technologies to identify cryptic infestations before outbreaks reach epidemic proportions. Bibi et al. review the revolutionary applications of cutting-edge technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), remote sensing (RS), and bioacoustics and vibration-based technologies for forest pest detection and management. They demonstrate how edge computing, deep-learning neural networks, and signal enhancement algorithms are particularly promising for cryptic wood-boring insects and can detect the hidden feeding vibrations of trunk-boring larvae inside living trees with high accuracy, transforming forest biosecurity from a reactive posture to a proactive, predictive discipline. At larger spatial scales, drone- and satellite-based multispectral remote sensing can provide non-destructive assessments of canopy stress, discoloration, and decline across extensive forest areas. Integrating these technologies could provide a multiscale monitoring framework, with satellite observations detecting broad patterns of forest stress, unmanned aerial vehicles enabling finer-scale assessments at the stand level, and ground-based sensors or targeted surveys confirming infestations at the individual-tree level. Such an integrated approach could shift forest biosecurity from reactive management in response to visible damage or pest outbreaks toward proactive, predictive strategies based on early detection, spatial prioritization, and timely intervention.

Conclusion and future directions

Collectively, the contributions to this Research Topic demonstrate that climate change is reshaping forest pest dynamics across multiple ecological and spatial scales, from species distributions and host-insect interactions to forest resilience and outbreak risk. Together, these studies emphasize the need to move from reactive pest control toward more predictive and adaptive management approaches that account for the interacting effects of climate, host condition, insect ecology, and landscape structure.

Future research should focus on integrating climate and species distribution models with insect phenology, host susceptibility, dispersal, and multitrophic interactions to improve predictions of emerging pest risks. Combining these ecological insights with remote sensing, AI-assisted monitoring, and early-detection technologies could enable more timely and targeted surveillance. At the same time, evaluating forest diversification and other climate-adaptive silvicultural strategies across different ecological and socioeconomic contexts are important for strengthening long-term forest resilience. Ultimately, linking prediction, ecological mechanisms, early detection, and adaptive management will be essential for forest biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and associated economic values in a rapidly changing climate.

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Footnotes

Edited and reviewed by: Pierluigi Bonello, The Ohio State University, United States