Chasing pavements: what causes insect outbreaks on city trees?
Date
2021-11
Authors
Buenrostro, Jacqueline H., author
Hufbauer, Ruth A., author
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Abstract
Urban areas are expanding rapidly, with the majority of the global and US population inhabiting them. Urban forests are critically important for providing ecosystem services to the growing urban populace, but their health is threatened by invasive insects. Furthermore, insect abundance and damage are highly variable in different sites across urban landscapes, such that trees in some insect "hot spots" experience outbreaks and are severely damaged while others are relatively unaffected. To protect urban forests against damage from invasive insects and ensure subsequent ecosystem service delivery, we must first understand the factors that promote insect pest outbreaks across urban landscapes. We explored how a variety of environmental factors that vary across urban habitats influence abundance of invasive insects. Specifically, we evaluate how vegetational complexity, distance to buildings, impervious surface, and host host availability affect abundance of two co-occurring non-native defoliators of elm: the Elm Leaf Beetle (Xanthogaleruca luteola) and the Elm Leafminer (Fenusa ulmi). We found that local urban environments are associated with pest abundance, but direction and strength of associations are dependent upon insect life history. Results of this study can be used to inform future urban tree planting and pest management efforts in an era where globalization and climate change make the urban forest particularly vulnerable to attack.
Description
College of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Agricultural Biology. Graduate Degree Program in Ecology.
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Subject
invasive species
urban forest
urban ecology
insect outbreaks