The Impact of Climate Change on Potential Invasion Risk of Oryctes monoceros Worldwide

Abstract

As a significant threat to agriculture, pests have caused a great disservice to crop production and food security. Understanding the mechanisms of pests’ outbreaks and invasion is critical in giving sound suggestions on their control and prevention strategies. The African rhinoceros beetle, Oryctes monoceros (Olivier), as the most damaging pest of palms, banana, sugarcane, and pineapple, severely threatens their production due to its ability to kill both young and matured hosts. Analyzing the effect of climate change on major parameters of O. monoceros life history has been an important issue recently, given its sensitivity to thermal conditions. However, information on how climate change alters geographical distribution of O. monoceros is poorly understood. By combining environmental variables and occurrence records, we were able to assess environmental risk factors for O. monoceros and create risk maps for the pest using the Boosted Regression Tree model. Our results significance of environmental variables showed that the annual temperature variation (39.45%), seasonality of temperature (23.00%), the isothermality (18.76%), precipitation of the hottest quarter months (6.07%), average variation of day time temperature (3.27%), were relatively important environmental factors that affected the distribution O. monoceros. We also found that the projected potential distributions of the pest’s habitats in all future global warming scenarios exceeded its present known distribution. The model predicts that habitat suitability for O. monoceros is predominantly concentrated along Africa’s west and east coastlines, Asia’s south coasts, South America’s north and east coasts, and a few locations spread over North America’s southern coasts and coastal regions. These outputs provide a solid theoretical foundation for O. monoceros risk evaluations and control.

Oil palm plantation systems are at a crossroads

“…Apart from the intrinsic questions related to the large-scale monoculture of a single plant species over extensive areas, it should be noted that global palm oil production is limited Àin its vast majority-to a rather narrow geographical region that is virtually restricted to either side of the Strait of Malacca. This concentration might lead to serious problems should either an extreme climate event or a pest/disease invasion arises, which could be interconnected (Paterson, 2019;Paterson et al, 2013;Aidoo et al, 2022).…”

Insects as food and medicine: a sustainable solution for global health and environmental challenges

“…Though consuming edible insects for food and using them for treating animal and human diseases have received greater attention, there needs to be more information on other benefits associated with production, marketing and harvesting. For instance, the African coconut beetle Oryctes monoceros (Olivier), Asiatic rhinoceros beetles Oryctes rhinoceros (Linnaeus), and African palm weevil Rhychophorus phoenicis (L.) attack and kill economically important crops, such as palms, banana, and pineapple (17)(18)(19)(20). However, many people in Sub-Saharan Africa consume the same insects because of their nutritional properties (21,22).…”

Combined Effects of Climate and Pests on Fig (Ficus carica L.) Yield in a Mediterranean Region: Implications for Sustainable Agricultural Strategies

“…In the Mediterranean region, studies have reported the invasion of new pests causing multiple outbreaks with severe socioeconomic impacts [32][33][34][35]. Studies have argued that recent pest outbreaks were fostered by climate change [36][37][38], which suggests that future scenarios of climate warming might exacerbate the number of outbreaks on crop fields [38]. Therefore, understanding how agro-ecosystems are influenced by the combined impacts of abiotic and biotic stressors is vital for maintaining food security and nutrition.…”