Only two publications gave matched pollutant and outcome comparisons of beneficial invertebrates and pests in a 2024 data release

We checked direct support for air pollution comparisons between beneficial invertebrates and significant pests in the public data from Ryalls et al. (2024). We selected 581 records from 89 publications. Only 32 records (5.5 percent) had both roles within the same pollutant, publication and broad outcome type. These formed four groups from two publications: a 1997 US study and a 2022 UK study. Ozone had two matched publications, nitrogen oxides had one, and sulfur dioxide and particulate matter had none. The UK paper supplied both pollutant comparisons. Descriptive ozone contrasts were +0.050 for US abundance, -0.136 for US survival and -0.657 for UK abundance, in beneficial minus pest log response ratios. An exact fixed effects calculation shows that only these two papers inform a role coefficient after separate intercepts for each publication and outcome pair are removed. No region and publication-era stratum had more than one matched paper. Publication years do not give field observation periods. Thus this release cannot support an independent matched test across regions and time. This audit does not test the validity of the original random effects model or show equal pollution effects. Broad outcome matches still compare different taxa and measurements. Climate interactions were not tested. Code, source hashes, aggregate evidence, a figure and independent numerical checks are included.

air pollution · invertebrates · biodiversity · ozone · nitrogen oxides · meta-analysis · observation bias · comparison support · outcome matching · replication