NightWarming Affecting Interspecific Interactions: Implications for Biological Control

Abstract

Climate warming is largely attributed to a substantial increase in nighttime rather than in daytime temperatures. However, previous studies concerning the warming effects on species and interspecific interactions mainly focus on changes in average or daytime temperature. Night warming is often overlooked in climate change studies. Importantly, the thermal effects of daytime and nighttime temperatures differ at almost all levels. Neglecting realistic diel asymmetric warming has been found to lead to misleading or even opposite results of warming effects on plants, herbivorous insects, natural enemies and their interactions. Existing evidence thus emphasizes that the effects of night warming should be taken into account in climate change studies and have important implications for biological control, pest management and ecosystem functioning in the context of ongoing climate warming.