2026/07/09 by Cuiying Wang, Xianwen Yang, Duo Wang +3
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Research on scale insects #Forest Insect Ecology and Management #Phytoplasmas and Hemiptera pathogens
paper · doi:10.1093/jee/toag223
Abstract Ceroplastes stellifer (Hemiptera, Coccidae) is a notable invasive species that has spread to over 67 countries or regions, seriously threatening agricultural, forestry, and ornamental plants. To identify the current and future potential distributions of C. stellifer, this study employed maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and Random Forest (RF) models to generate global risk maps for its spread under current and future climate scenarios. The established models demonstrated robust credibility and accuracy based on AUC, TSS, and CBI metrics. Temperature annual range (Bio7) was the most influential variable in both models, accounting for permutation importance of 57.9% and 43.09%, respectively. Despite slight differences in secondary variables, Bio7 and Bio18 (precipitation of warmest quarter) were identified as dominant factors, indicating consistent results across models. Schoener’s D tests revealed consistency between 2 models, and the predicted suitable habitat for C. stellifer are mainly distributed across southern and southeastern Asia, southern North America, South America, and Africa. Under future climate scenarios, both models predicted no continuous expansion in total suitable habitat of this pest relative to current climatic conditions. By 2100, suitable habitat would contract by 4.57% to 14.53% under most scenarios and show only a slight mid-term expansion followed by a decline under SSP 585. The MaxEnt model exhibited large fluctuations in suitable range, while the RF model yielded more stable results. By assessing the potential suitable areas and key environmental variables of C. stellifer, theoretical and technical basis is provided for the prevention and control management of the spread, outbreak, and invasion of this pest.