Pollinators are experiencing catastrophic declines globally, with individual insect welfare intertwined with population collapse from pesticides, habitat loss, and disease.
Pollinator welfare exists at the intersection of individual insect welfare and population ecology. Individual bees exposed to sublethal neonicotinoid doses show impaired navigation causing them to become lost and unable to return to the colony, dying in the field. Infected bumblebee colonies show behavioral and physiological stress. Butterflies affected by habitat loss cannot find the specific larval food plants they require, dying before completing their life cycle. The precautionary welfare principle suggests minimizing individual insect suffering even in the absence of certainty about their sentience. At the population level, pollinator collapse has ecological consequences affecting wild plants and food crops, with cascading welfare effects on animals that depend on insect-pollinated plants.