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Impact of Environmental Microparticles on Insect Olfaction
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This review pulls together existing research showing that tiny environmental particles—like microplastics, tire dust, and soot—can interfere with insects' sense of smell, making it harder for them to find food, mates, and egg-laying sites. Since insects rely on smell for pollination, pest control, and decomposition, this disruption could ripple outward to affect crop yields, food webs, and biodiversity—meaning the same pollution particles found in our air and water may already be quietly undermining the natural systems that support our food supply.
Terrestrial insects underpin key ecosystem services, including pollination, herbivory regulation, decomposition, nutrient cycling, and disease control. These functions depend on chemical communication that guides insects to food, mates, hosts, shelters, and oviposition sites while helping them avoid threats. Environmental microparticles, such as micro- and nanoplastics, tyre wear particles, soot, mineral dust, and agricultural residues, are now widespread across air, soil, vegetation, and indoor environments, exposing insects through contact, deposition, and ingestion. Growing evidence shows that these particles disrupt insect olfaction by adsorbing volatile compounds, blocking antennal sensilla, and interfering with receptor and neuronal processes. These disruptions impair foraging, mating, oviposition, and host seeking, leading to reduced individual performance and declines in population density. As a result, insect-mediated services such as pollination, biological control, seed dispersal, and nutrient cycling are weakened, with consequences for plant community composition, biodiversity, food web stability, and crop yields. Despite these advances, the mechanisms linking microparticles to olfactory disruption remain poorly resolved, and no synthesis has integrated evidence across the full pathway from signal emission to neural processing. This review brings together chemical, physiological, and ecological evidence to map how microparticles interfere with insect olfaction across this pathway, identify key knowledge gaps, and propose a multi-level research framework to guide future work from molecular mechanisms to ecological consequences.
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This review examined how primary and secondary atmospheric pollutants—including particulate matter, NOx, ozone, and micro/nanoplastics—disrupt volatile organic compound-mediated insect ecosystem services such as pollination, predator-prey interactions, and plant defense signaling.
Insects at the crossroads of microplastics pollution: Mechanistic insights, ecological risks, and research frontiers
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This review of existing research found that tiny plastic particles called microplastics are harming insects by causing stress in their bodies and affecting their ability to digest food, think clearly, and reproduce. Insects also break down larger plastic pieces into even more microplastics, making the pollution problem worse. This matters because insects are crucial for pollinating our food crops and keeping ecosystems healthy, so plastic pollution could threaten our food supply.
Exposure Pathways and Toxicity of Microplastics in Terrestrial Insects
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This review summarizes what is known about how land-dwelling insects encounter, consume, and are affected by plastic pollution. Insects can accumulate microplastics and transfer them to animals higher up the food chain, and exposure has been linked to reduced growth, reproduction, and survival. Since insects play critical roles in pollination and soil health, widespread plastic contamination could have cascading effects on ecosystems and agriculture.
Interactions of insects with micro- and nanoplastics: A review
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This comprehensive review of 114 studies found that micro- and nanoplastics accumulate in both terrestrial and aquatic insects, causing reduced growth, impaired reproduction, oxidative stress, and gut microbiome disruption. Since insects are foundational to food webs and pollination, plastic contamination in insect populations could cascade through ecosystems and ultimately affect human food systems.
Nano/micro-plastics effects in agricultural landscapes: an overlooked threat to pollination, biological pest control, and food security
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This review synthesized evidence on nano/microplastic (NMP) effects on pollinators and biocontrol agents at organismal, farm, and landscape scales, finding that ingested NMP cause gene expression changes, organ damage, and behavioral modifications. The authors identify NMP-polluted 'NMP islands' as potential hotspots that may alter floral resource distributions and amplify synergistic threats with pathogens and antibiotics to agricultural ecosystem services.
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