Insects moving north nearly 2 miles a year

Climate News Network - A fungus is heading your way. The caterpillars are on the march. So are viruses and any number of insects and nematode worms, and since 1960 they have been shifting north and south at an average speed of 3 kilometres [1.86 miles] a year as the world warms, according to researchers at Exeter University in the UK.

Sandra Gurr and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that they looked at more than 26,000 observations of 612 well-known crop pests and had access to observations made much earlier, including the first record of fungus attack on oilseed rape in the UK in 1822.

Crop pests can cause famine, devastation and economic ruin. The 19th century Irish potato famine was caused by the pathogen Phytophthora infestans and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 was blamed on the fungus Helminthosporium oryzae. And French winegrowers have never forgotten or forgiven the Phylloxera aphid that destroyed the vineyards.