Project Grant 2544883

Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology awarded $299,292 to the University of Florida (Award Date: September 1, 2026; Completion Date: August 31, 2029) under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding how extreme climate and weather events affect insect populations across the contiguous United States. The project focuses on three ecologically and societally significant insect groups—mosquitoes, butterflies and moths, and ground beetles—and will integrate over 25 million insect records from monitoring networks, community science programs, and surveillance databases with 45 years of high-resolution climate data. Using artificial intelligence tools and ecological modeling, the research team will analyze how multiple dimensions of extreme events (frequency, intensity, duration, timing, and sequence) interact with species traits to determine which insect populations are most vulnerable and which may benefit from environmental extremes.

Key deliverables include the development of a publicly accessible Extreme Climate and Weather Event Atlas for the contiguous U.S. that characterizes extreme events by their multidimensional characteristics, and a generalizable analytical framework that moves beyond single-event studies to provide actionable insights for conservation, food security, and public health resilience strategies. This collaborative effort addresses critical knowledge gaps regarding the differential impacts of climate variability on beneficial and harmful insect species, with direct applications to agricultural productivity and disease vector management across multiple U.S. regions.