The dramatic global decline in insect biodiversity affects not only ecosystem function but also the welfare of the countless vertebrate species that depend on insects for food, creating cascading welfare impacts through food webs.
Insect decline is typically framed as a biodiversity and ecosystem services crisis, but its welfare implications for dependent animals are profound. Insectivorous bird chicks that cannot obtain sufficient food die slowly of starvation. Bats that cannot find adequate insect prey experience nutritional stress and reproductive failure. Freshwater invertebrates that form the base of river food webs disappear, leaving fish and amphibians without sustenance. These welfare impacts are diffuse and largely invisible but affect billions of individual animals annually. Addressing insect decline is therefore not only a conservation priority but a welfare emergency of extraordinary scale.