Climate change impacts on temperate fruit and nut production: a systematic review.

Temperate fruit and nut crops require distinctive cold and warm seasons to meet their physiological requirements and progress through their phenological stages. Consequently, they have been traditionally cultivated in warm temperate climate regions characterized by dry-summer and wet-winter seasons. However, fruit and nut production in these areas faces new challenging conditions due to increasingly severe and erratic weather patterns caused by climate change. This review represents an effort towards identifying the current state of knowledge, key challenges, and gaps that emerge from studies of climate change effects on fruit and nut crops produced in warm temperate climates. Following the PRISMA methodology for systematic reviews, we analyzed 403 articles published between 2000 and 2023 that met the defined eligibility criteria. A 44-fold increase in the number of publications during the last two decades reflects a growing interest in research related to both a better understanding of the effects of climate anomalies on temperate fruit and nut production and the need to find strategies that allow this industry to adapt to current and future weather conditions while reducing its environmental impacts. In an extended analysis beyond the scope of the systematic review methodology, we classified the literature into six main areas of research, including responses to environmental conditions, water management, sustainable agriculture, breeding and genetics, prediction models, and production systems. Given the rapid expansion of climate change-related literature, our analysis provides valuable information for researchers, as it can help them identify aspects that are well understood, topics that remain unexplored, and urgent questions that need to be addressed in the future.

Invasion dynamics of the European bumblebee Bombus terrestris in the southern part of South America.

Invasive species are one of the main biodiversity loss drivers. Some species can establish and thrive in novel habitats, impacting local communities, as is the case of managed pollinators. In this regard, an invasive species' expansion process over time is critical for its control and management. A good example is the European bumblebee Bombus terrestris, which has rapidly invaded the southern part of South America after being repeatedly introduced in Chile for crop pollination since 1997. We assessed the temporal dynamics of B. terrestris invasion in Argentina and Chile by compiling 562 occurrence points from 2000 to 2019. We used two estimators (minimum convex polygon and 95% fixed kernel) to estimate the increase of the invaded area over time. We found that the area invaded by B. terrestris in the southern part of South America presents a linear increase over time, which was consistent for both estimators. In this scenario, species traits, environmental characteristics, and introduction dynamics facilitate a rapid invasion process that will continue to expand, reaching other South American countries in the near future. As this bumblebee is a super-generalist, it probably will expand across South America, as climate niche modelling predicts, if no actions were taken.