Climate Change Forces Moths to Find New Host

Climate change, it seems, has forced moths in northern Iran to find a new host plant, posing some problems for its newly acquired target, according to recent research.

A team of Iranian researchers from the Rice Research Institute of Iran has discovered that Gynnodomorpha permixtana, a well-known moth species from Europe and Asia, has changed its host preferences in order to adjust to northern Iran's changing climate.

Until now, larvae of this moth species have munched on the seeds and flowers of plants like water-plantain, eyebright, lousewort, bitter root and European yellow-rattle, all of which are abundant across Europe and Asia. But this new study shows that they have now set their sights on arrowheads.

Arrowheads (Sagittaria trifolia) are a group of broadleaf weeds that thrive in rice fields and waterways. And luckily for these rice crops, problematic arrowheads are being eaten away and losing germination potential because of hungry G. permixtana.

"To our surprise, it looks like this moth chose new host plant in Iran," study lead author Atousa Farahpour Haghani added in a news release.

This new discovery, which suggests that climatic and environmental conditions in northern regions of Iran prompted the change of host plant, also provides insight into how species such as these moths adapt to a changing world.

"Many factors can possibly influence host plant choice including food quality and quantity, climatic conditions, synchronization, physiological conditions in both insect and food plant, genetic modifications etc.," Haghani explained.

"Some of these factors are not stable and change in different environmental conditions, so an insect can change its choice of food plant on the basis of seeking the most beneficial complex of factors. It seems that in the northern regions of Iran, and luckily for rice crops, the problematic arrowheads present the best choice for G. permixtana," he added.

The findings were published in the journal Nota Lepidopterologica.