Wild insect populations have declined dramatically globally — with implications for both ecosystem welfare and the welfare of the billions of individual insects affected.
Wild insect decline raises both ecological and welfare concerns. Ecologically, insects underpin most terrestrial food webs and provide essential ecosystem services including pollination and decomposition. From a welfare perspective, the scale of insect suffering during population decline is difficult to assess given uncertainty about insect sentience, but the same pesticide exposures that drive population decline can cause sublethal neurological harm in individual insects. Whether or not individual insect welfare is morally significant, the ecosystem welfare consequences of insect decline — for birds, bats, amphibians, and other insectivores — are clear and significant.