THE RESEARCH OF PLANT-INSECT INTERACTIONS OVER THE LAST TWO DECADES

Ecologists have long been interested in the interactions between plants and insects. However, there are few recent reviews and syntheses on plant-insect interactions research. To explore the current state of plant-insect interactions research and promote the research progress of plant-insect interactions, we used bibliometric methodologies to analyze the annual publication volume, research strength, and research hotspots of the literature about plant-insect interactions included in the Web of Science from 2001 to 2021. The results showed that the number of publications on plant-insect interactions research increased steadily from 2001 to 2021, with the initial development stage occurring before 2004 and a steady growth stage from 2005 to 2009, as well as a steady growth trend in the number of publications. After 2010, it entered a phase of rapid development, with the highest number of articles in 2021, with 352 publications. The studies were mostly conducted in developed countries. The USA had the most publications and the greatest influence, with a total of 1,218 publications. Furthermore, China had the second-highest number of publications and the strongest growth in the last 5 years (from 2017 to 2021) in terms of recent publication output. The University of California System stands out as the research institution with the highest number of publications, followed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) were the top two among the top 15 institutions in terms of article publication in the past five years. The author with the most publications was Dicke M, while Wei TY had been more active with 66.67% of the total number of papers published in the last five years. Oecologia was the journal that published the most academic articles in plant-insect interactions research, but PNAS had the highest impact factors. The hotspots primarily concentrated on understanding the impact of insect-plant interactions on genes, the interconnections between insects and plants, and the effects of these interactions on the diversity of ecosystems. The number of Chinese publications increased rapidly during the previous five years, indicating some strength in plant-insect interaction research. However, there is still much opportunity for improvement in terms of both the quality and number of study findings. With China's continued investment in scientific research in recent years, it is projected that plant-insect interaction research will have a significant developmental tendency in the future.