By USQ
Air pollution disproportionately harms bees and other beneficial insects compared to crop-destroying pests, a new study published in Nature Communications has found.
Researchers from the University of Reading and the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) analysed data from 120 scientific papers to understand how 40 types of insects in 19 countries responded to air pollutants like ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, and particulate matter.
University of Southern Queensland Centre for Sustainable Agricultural Systems Director Professor Robbie Girling. Source: UniSQ
The study revealed that beneficial insects, including pollinators like bees, moths, and butterflies, experienced up to a 39 percent decline in performance when exposed to elevated levels of air pollution. In contrast, crop-damaging pests such as aphids were not significantly impacted.
Professor Robbie Girling, director of the UniSQ Centre for Sustainable Agricultural Systems and co-author of the study, highlighted the broader implications for agriculture and food security.
“This is yet another stressor affecting our global pollinator populations, in combination with land use change, habitat destruction, and climate change,” Professor Girling said.
“This combination of stressors is putting increased pressures on pollinator populations, and we need to find ways to alleviate this range of stressors to help give our pollinators a greater fighting chance.”
Dr James Ryalls, a research fellow at the University of Reading and the study’s lead author, described air pollution as an “underappreciated threat” to beneficial insects.
“The bees that pollinate our flowers and the wasps that provide natural pest control are at risk of further decline if air pollution levels are not addressed,” Dr Ryalls said.
“We are facing a lose-lose scenario where air pollution harms helpful insects without affecting pests, potentially leading to greater crop damage, reduced yields, and less food on supermarket shelves.”
The researchers suggest that beneficial insects are more affected by air pollution due to their reliance on scent-based communication.
Many beneficial insects use airborne chemical signals to locate flowers, find mates, or hunt prey.
Air pollutants can chemically alter these scent trails or interfere with insects’ ability to detect them, disrupting their sensory landscape.
In contrast, many pests rely less on long-distance scent cues and more on direct contact or visual cues, making them less vulnerable to the effects of air pollution on airborne chemical signals.
The study examined how air pollution impacts various aspects of insect behaviour and biology, including feeding, growth, survival, reproduction, and the ability to locate food sources.
Of all these factors, insects’ ability to find food was most severely impaired by air pollution, declining by about one-third on average.
