On this week’s Good Growing Podcast, we chat with assistant professor and faculty Extension specialist Kacie Athey about climate change and insects. We discuss what impacts our changing climate may have on insects, like will we see range expansions, more generations, more plant damage, phenology, and more!

Skip to what you want to know:

• 03:53 – What is phenology?
• 04:35 – Welcome Kacie
• 05:15 – Climate change research on insects and specialty crops
• 07:30 - With a warming environment, will we see population expansions of southern insects north to Illinois?
• 09:40 – Is there a possibility we will see insect ranges shrink?
• 11:19 – Will climate change affect disease vectors like mosquitoes?
• 13:58 – With warming and shorter winters and a longer growing season, will we see more insects in the summer? Will we see more generations of insects? 16:10 – We often focus on pest insects and climate change, what about beneficial insects?
• 18:12 – Climate models show Illinois getting wetter, how will more rainfall affect insects?
• 20:25 – Will we see more diseases affecting insects in a wetter environment?
• 21:35 – We can likely expect to see more damage to plants from pest insects, is there anything else we may see?
• 23:35 – After the 2012 drought, there was a drastic drop in monarch populations, could this be linked?
• 25:17 – Is there a chance we’ll see more insect-vectored plant diseases?
• 26:51 – Pest outbreaks armyworms and melonworms
• 29:09 – With a changing climate will phenology between insects and plants be thrown off?
• 31:10 – Insects are often overlooked as decomposers, will climate change affect them?
• 35:00 – Some insects need to be cold
• 35:52 – What impact do you think climate change will have on insects?
• 38:00 – Future specialty crop research in Illinois