Macroscopic patterns and microscopic mechanisms of the outbreak of rice planthoppers and epidemic SRBSDV

Key Words：rice planthoppers, SRBSDV, regional migration patterns, epidemic mechanisms

Abstract：        Regional epidemics of the southern rice black-streaked dwarf virus（SRBSDV）and outbreaks of its rice planthopper (RPH) vectors, including the white backed planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Horváth), and the small brown planthopper, Laodelphax striatellus (Fallén), have posed a significant threat to rice production and food security in China since 2009. At the present time, management of this epidemic disease is hampered by our poor understanding of both the disease and its vectors. It is therefore important to improve national and international cooperation so that multidisciplinary research can be used to investigate the outbreak mechanisms of both rice planthoppers and epidemic SRBSDV. Research should be focused on the regional migration patterns of vectors in East Asia and the interaction between virus and vectors, including migration pathways, immigration events, the distribution of the virus source area, the survival and circulation of the virus and vectors and the spatiotemporal evolution of SRBSDV.