Abstract:
Conifer bark beetles are one of the most destructive trunk-boring pests in coniferous forest ecosystems, posing a serious threat to forest ecological security and sustainable forestry development. Climate change has intensified drought stress in coniferous forests, leading to a decline in host tree stress resistance, while simultaneously driving the northward shift of suitable habitats for bark beetles and the shortening of their generation cycles. These changes have markedly increased the outbreak frequency and damage severity of bark beetles, making them a critical biological disaster restricting the healthy management of coniferous forests. Traditional chemical control is constrained by environmental pollution, the development of pest resistance, and harm to non-target natural enemies, failing to achieve long-term and effective management. Chemical ecological regulation technology centered on semiochemicals has become an important approach for the green prevention and control of conifer bark beetles. This paper systematically reviews the ecological mechanisms of three key types of signaling substances—bark beetle pheromones, plant volatiles, and symbiotic microbial volatiles—and clarifies their functions in host location, mass attack, population regulation, and natural enemy location. Based on field management practices, it summarizes the application status and key deployment parameters of semiochemicals in population monitoring, mass trapping, and push-pull control strategies, and analyzes the specific effects of chiral enantiomer ratios on the behavioral regulation of bark beetles. Furthermore, it elaborates on the application prospects of reverse chemical ecology approaches in the discovery of novel signaling substances, functional validation, and identification of related olfactory receptor genes. Currently, research on semiochemicals of conifer bark beetles still has the following deficiencies: insufficient systematic studies on species specificity and geographic population variation of pheromone components; inadequate elucidation of the behavioral regulation mechanisms of chiral enantiomers; a lack of standardized systems for deployment parameters of field trapping and control technologies; and the ecological function analysis and biocontrol potential exploitation of microbial-derived volatiles are still in their infancy, with lagging technology translation and application. Future research should focus on functional analysis of key signaling substances, precise development of chiral attractants, standardization of field application technologies, and exploitation of microbial biocontrol resources, so as to provide theoretical basis and practical reference for the green and precise prevention and control of conifer bark beetles under the context of climate change.