Abstract
Accurately predicting and mitigating the effects of climate change on
species ranges and interactions is a critical challenge. In particular,
mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue are poised to shift with
climate change. Understanding this impact hinges on a key open question:
How will mosquitoes adapt to climate change? Here we adapt a simple
framework widely used in conservation biology—evolutionary rescue
models—to investigate the potential for mosquito climate adaptation,
and we synthesize current evidence, focusing on adaptation to rising
temperatures. Short mosquito generation times, high population growth
rates, and strong temperature-imposed selection favor mosquito thermal
adaptation. However, knowledge gaps about the extent of phenotypic and
genotypic variation in thermal tolerance within mosquito populations,
the environmental sensitivity of selection, and the role of phenotypic
plasticity constrain our ability to make more precise estimates. Future
research efforts should prioritize filling these data gaps.
Specifically, we outline how common garden and selection experiments can
be used to this end. Collecting and incorporating these data into an
evolutionary rescue framework will improve estimates of mosquito
adaptive potential and of changes in mosquito-borne disease transmission
under climate change, and this approach can be applied more broadly to
pests as well as species of conservation concern.