Global Habitat Suitability and Distribution Shift Predictions of Myzus persicae Under Climate Change Based on an Optimized MaxEnt Model

Myzus persicae (Sulzer) is a globally important agricultural pest and a vector of numerous plant viruses. However, its potential global distribution under future climate change remains insufficiently quantified. In this study, we used 5531 occurrence records, six key bioclimatic variables, and an ENMeval-optimized maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model to predict the global habitat suitability of M. persicae. Predictions were made under current climatic conditions and two future Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios, SSP1-2.6 (SSP126) and SSP5-8.5 (SSP585), for the 2030s and 2050s. The model showed acceptable discriminatory performance, with a mean training AUC of 0.853, while four-fold spatial block validation produced a mean validation AUC of 0.874 ± 0.044. The mean temperature of the coldest quarter (Bio11) was the most influential predictor, showing a strong association between winter temperature and the predicted suitability of M. persicae. Under current climatic conditions, highly suitable habitats were concentrated mainly in temperate and subtropical agricultural regions. Future projections indicated an overall expansion of suitable habitats and a general tendency toward higher latitudes, with the greatest expansion of highly suitable habitat occurring under SSP126 in the 2050s. Conversely, suitability declined in some tropical and subtropical regions, suggesting that stronger warming may partly offset suitability gains at lower latitudes. These findings suggest that the projected changes in the climatic suitability of M. persicae may not be proportional to warming intensity and may inform global potential climatic risk assessment and climate-adaptive pest management.