Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology awarded a $100,704 Project Grant to the University of Wisconsin - Madison on September 1, 2026, 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 research focuses on three ecologically and societally important insect groups—mosquitoes, butterflies and moths, and ground beetles—and integrates artificial intelligence tools to analyze relationships between extreme environmental events and species characteristics. Deliverables include analysis of more than 25 million insect records sourced from monitoring networks, community science programs, and surveillance programs, combined with 45 years of high-resolution climate data to produce generalizable insights applicable to conservation, food security, and One Health initiatives.

A key product of this three-year initiative (completion date August 31, 2029) is the creation of a publicly accessible extreme climate and weather event atlas for the contiguous United States that characterizes extreme events by their frequency, intensity, duration, timing, and sequence. By moving beyond single-event studies and employing ecological modeling with advanced computational methods, the project will generate predictive capabilities to anticipate insect population responses and inform the development of resilience strategies for protecting beneficial insect species while managing harmful ones in an increasingly variable climate.