Climate Change and Insects

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges in this century for our ecosystems and society as a whole. In the last twenty years, thousands of studies have been published, but the effect of a significant changing environment on insects is still the objective of pressing research worldwide. While experimental designs mainly based on the single effect of elevated temperature to selected species were created in the late 1990’s, research nowadays aims to investigate the combined effects of elevated temperature and CO₂ levels, changes in precipitation patterns, and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme events (such as dry spells on multi-trophic interactions). The use of multi-model approaches of numerical climate models that take also different emission scenarios into account allows for the quantification of uncertainties in such climate change impact studies.

This Special Issue aims to collect recent findings on the effect of climate change on insects—from single species to communities, distribution, life cycle impacts, arthropod-plant interactions, insect pathology, ecosystem services, as well as plant protection strategies in agriculture, viticulture, horticulture, and forest systems. Even aspects of apiculture and wild pollinators will be targeted. Topics of particular interest include ecology, physiology, behaviour, modelling, plant protection strategies, but also big data approaches that may be useful to fully understand the effect of climate change challenge to insects.

Dr. Michael Eickermann
Prof. Dr. Carmelo Rapisarda
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Insects is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.