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Video Q&A ViewAttendees 1

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

10-Minute Paper

P-IE: Ecology On-Demand Presentations

i-Tree Pest Predictor: A new, forthcoming tool to forecast impact of non-native insects on North American tree species

On-Demand
On-Demand

In global forest ecosystems, introduced insects cause impacts that range from minor damage to functional host extinction. Forecasting potential impact of insects that have not yet arrived is essential for improving biosecurity measures. Using available data from introduced insects currently established in North American forest ecosystems, we evaluated several drivers that could explain why some introduced insects are benign while others are catastrophic. We considered four submodels: (i) insect traits, (ii) host traits, (iii) host evolutionary history, and (iv) insect evolutionary history. We found differences between the factors that drive the impact of insects that feed on conifers versus hardwoods, have a narrow native host breadth versus broad host breadth, and feed in different guilds (e.g., sapfeeders versus non-sapfeeders). As a result, we consolidated significant submodels into five composite pest impact models – (i) hardwood-feeding Scolytines with narrow host breadth, (ii) hardwood-feeding non-Scolytines with a narrow host breadth, (iii) hardwood-feeding insects with a wide host breadth, (iv) conifer-feeding insects that are sapfeeders, and (v) conifer-feeding insects that are not sapfeeders – that can be used to forecast which non-native insects have a high probability of causing tree mortality in North American forests should they establish. These models have been built into an i-Tree Pest Predictor tool, which will be incorporated into i-Tree (https://www.itreetools.org/). The tool can help support non-native insect risk assessment on 360+ hardwood and 50+ conifer trees native to North America, and aid decision-making by federal scientists and forest resource managers.