Weather and the Population Dynamics of Insects: Integrating Physiological and Population Ecology

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Abstract
The study of weather effects in insect ecology should focus on how physiological and behavioral characteristics of individual organisms translate into population and community dynamics. I present four case studies in which both the physiological mechanisms by which weather variation affects individuals and the consequences of such variation for fitness variation or population dynamics have been examined: (1) Larval metabolism and population variation in generation time; (2) thermoregulation, reproductive success, and population fluctuations in pierid butterflies; (3) temperature mediation of the interaction between ladybird beetles and pea aphids; and (4) weather effects on host-plant quality and population regulation in a woodland butterfly. The results emphasize two general roles that weather can play in population ecology: that of a limiting factor that determines the relative importance of various biotic determinants of population dynamics, and that of a source of environmental variation that affects physiological rate processes and thereby mediates interspecific interactions. Changing the focus of inquiry from mechanisms of population regulation to the interplay of biotic and abiotic factors reestablishes the conceptual importance of weather for population ecology.

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