Health
Air pollution harms pollinators more than pests, study finds
A new study finds that honeybees and other beneficial insects suffer disproportionately from air pollution compared to pests that damage crops. Researchers from the University of Reading analyzed data from 120 scientific papers to understand how 40 insect species from 19 countries respond to air pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter. The study was published in the journal Nature. Nature Communications The study found that pollinators such as honeybees and some moths and butterflies were 39% less efficient at foraging after being exposed to elevated levels of air pollution. In contrast, plant-feeding aphids and other pests were not significantly affected.
Researchers suggest that beneficial insects such as honeybees and wasps may be more susceptible to air pollution because they rely on scent communication, many of which use chemical signals in the air to find flowers, locate mates or hunt prey.
Air pollutants essentially disrupt the insects' sensory environment by chemically altering these odor signatures or interfering with the insects' ability to detect them. In contrast, many pest insects rely more on direct contact and visual cues than long-distance odor cues and are therefore less affected by air pollution on their airborne chemical signals.
The study focused on how air pollution affects different behavioral and biological aspects of insects, including their feeding, growth, survival, reproduction and ability to find food sources. Of all these factors, insects' ability to find food was most severely impaired by air pollution, decreasing by about one-third on average.
Of all air pollutants, ozone was found to be particularly harmful to beneficial insects, reducing their reproduction and ecosystem function by 35%. Ozone pollution has the most detrimental effects, and even low levels of ozone below current air quality standards can cause significant damage. Nitrogen oxides also caused significant harm to beneficial insects.
“Changes in invertebrate behavior do not depend on air pollutant concentration, indicating that even low levels of pollution can be harmful. Projected increases in tropospheric ozone may have unanticipated consequences for invertebrate populations and their valuable ecosystem services worldwide,” the researchers wrote. “While our findings provide clear conclusions about the effects of individual pollutants applied in laboratory environments, there is currently little research on the effects of coexisting air pollutants and how these pollutants interact in different mixing ratios that could result from current and future emission scenarios.”
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