Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Effect Of Warmer Winters On The Demography Of An Outbreak Insect Is Hidden By Intraspecific Competition, Devin W. Goodsman, Guenchik Grosklos, Brian H. Aukema, Caroline Whitehouse, Katherine P. Bleiker, Nate G. Mcdowell, Richard S. Middleton, Chonggang Xu

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Warmer climates are predicted to increase bark beetle outbreak frequency, severity, and range. Even in favorable climates, however, outbreaks can decelerate due to resource limitation, which necessitates the inclusion of competition for limited resources in analyses of climatic effects on populations. We evaluated several hypotheses of how climate impacts mountain pine beetle reproduction using an extensive 9‐year dataset, in which nearly 10,000 trees were sampled across a region of approximately 90,000 km², that was recently invaded by the mountain pine beetle in Alberta, Canada. Our analysis supports the hypothesis of a positive effect of warmer winter temperatures on …