PhD student
Email: baptiste.regnier@universite-paris-saclay.fr
Subject: Modeling insect pests phenology in tropical agro-ecosystems
Abstract:
While we are observing a decline in insect biodiversity due to global changes and in particular global warming, some species of insect pests are increasingly present and threaten food security in inter-tropical regions. This is the case of maize pests in East Africa. It is therefore relevant to develop models to optimize and contribute to sustainable pest control methods in agro-ecosystems. In addition, in the context of global warming, a quantification of the relationship between insect development and temperature is essential to understand the influence of temperature changes on insect development and in particular on crop pests. Although many laboratory data are available on the insect response to temperature, an adjustment is needed for their use under field conditions. Thus, the objective of this PhD is to analyze the existing literature to propose common and shared modeling practices, to build models to assess the potential impacts of temperature increases on pest development, and finally to design and deploy a network of sensors and insect tracking, and then to analyze the time series obtained to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics and develop phenological models for crop pest species in the intertropical zone.
Productions:
Régnier, B., Legrand, J., Rebaudo, F., 2022. Modeling Temperature-Dependent Development Rate in Insects and Implications of Experimental Design. Environmental Entomology 51, 132–144. https://doi.org/10.1093/ee/nvab115
Rebaudo F., Régnier B. (2022). devRate: Quantify the Relationship Between Development Rate and Temperature in Ectotherms. R package version 0.2.2, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=devRate.