How climate changes might affect biological aspects and distribution of tomato leaf miner, Tuta absoluta in Egyptian agro-ecosystem?

Tomato leaf miner (TLM) is one of destructive insect pest for tomato plants in Egypt, which is considered as one of the world leading tomato producer. Estimating thermal requirements of TLM stages are essential to construct biological models for forecasting development, survivor and spatial distribution of the pest population, which are urgent when making a decision to manage the pest. Therefore current study aimed initially to estimate the thermal limits and requirements of TLM development. The obtained thermal limits and requirements were employed with interpolated temperature data from world climate database for mapping and forecasting spatial and temporal variations of those biological treats in Egyptian Agro-ecosystems under current and expected climatic changes scenarios of 2050. Upper and lower limit temperatures for TLM development are 7.6 and 35.4 °C, respectively, that it need 450.9 thermal units to complete life cycle. Medium temperature has negative significant effect on longevities of adults. Total immature stages period ranged between 21–34.9 days under current warm climatic conditions and it is expected to recede to 20.12—28.34 days in 2050. Despite the current thermal conditions of cold seasons can prolong it to 91.83 days in some provinces, expected thermal climatic conditions of 2050 will depress it to 57 days. It is expected that TLM existence will be restricted in north delta and western north cost governorates in warm seasons of 2050. It is also expected that adults’ longevity will observably decrease 2–3 days in 2050.