Equal-paper ozone reproduction intervals crossed zero in three US and European period samples from a 2024 release

We tested whether lower reproduction under ozone repeated across regions and publication periods in a public invertebrate data release. We removed time-to-reproduction and winged-morph outcomes and gave each paper equal weight. Three supported samples had 31, 3 and 12 records from 6, 3 and 4 papers. Mean log response ratios were -0.004 for the USA in 1988-2004, +0.065 for Europe in 1988-2004 and -0.370 for Europe in 2005-2019. All three family-wise 95% t intervals included zero. The later US sample was empty. All four later European paper means were negative, but the exact two-sided sign test gave P=0.125. Outcome restrictions did not make the finding repeat across samples. Equal paper weights address unequal extraction counts, not publication bias. Few papers, mixed measures, nonrandom study selection and missing weather limit inference. Publication years are not experiment years. We test no climate interaction and do not estimate the original meta-analysis target. Code, aggregate evidence, source hashes, a figure and independent checks are included.

ozone · invertebrates · reproduction · observation bias · regional replication · evidence synthesis