Impact of climate change on rice insect pests and their natural enemies

Rice is one of the important staple foods for half of the world population particularly Asian countries for their livelihood, socio-economic and nutrition. Global warming is predicted to increase frequency of precipitation/rainfall, intensity of drought and solar-radiation/UV-B radiation which might affect the intensity and severity of rice pests in one hand, but also change in other friendly arthropods on the other hand. The present studies discuss the influence of climatic factors (temperature and rainfall) on yellow stem borer (YSB), brown planthopper (BPH), green leafhopper (GLH) and their natural enemies (spider, lady bird beetle, green mirid bug). Light trap and sweep net catches of arthropods from different rice habitats were used in this study. For GLH there is a strong periodicity at 6 months and a somewhat weaker periodicity at 12 months followed by an even weaker periodicity at 3 months, especially valid for both methods of data collection (light trap and sweep-net data). Finally, for GMB there is a strong periodicity at 6 months and a somewhat weaker periodicity at 3 months followed by an even weaker periodicity at 4 months. There is a general increasing trend over the ten years seems to be present in the GLH. This corresponds to that the abundance in 2005 is generally 15 times larger than in January 1996. For LBB, there is an increasing trend of log abundance of LBB over time and shows a strong periodicity at 3 months and a somewhat weaker periodicity at 4 months followed by an even weaker periodicity at about 6 months. For Spider there is a strong periodicity at 2.4 months and a somewhat weaker periodicity at 4 months followed by an even weaker periodicities at about 3 months and 6 months. Results show an increase of maximum temperature of approximately 0.5 to 1°C over 10 years