author(s)
Manju Devi and Nalini Challa

abstract
Climatic and weather changes not only affect the status of insect pests but also affect their population dynamics, distribution, abundance, intensity and feeding behavior. Both a-biotic (temperature, humidity, light) and biotic (host, vegetative biodiversity, crowding and diets) stresses significantly influence the insects and their population dynamics. Pest populations have a tendency to fluctuate with the environmental factors. A-biotic disturbances particularly upper and lower thermal affects the insect population fluctuation. Various insects respond to a-biotic factors like humidity, thermal affect, light and food etc. in different ways. Pest mites cause economic losses to the crop growers and significantly reduce the photosynthetic rate of plants due to stomatal limitation. The development and population densities of mites are very sensitive to weather conditions. Out of all-weather parameters, temperature is an important abiotic factor which has direct relation with the pest population levels in means of mite growth, survivorship and fecundity of mites. Therefore, knowing the weather requirements for pest fluctuations weather factors should be considered when developing pest management programs for mites.