Understood.

Got it.

No, I am not confident that biofuel subsidies decrease the population of invertebrates.

This makes sense to me, but I am not sure I fully understand why you describe biofuel subsidies as "quite appealing" for people who are "sufficiently suffering-focused". Maybe you believe that soil microarthropods are the most important to determine the expected change in welfare? In this case, I would agree that biofuel subsidies would be quite appealing because they seem to robustly decrease the population of microarthropods. However, I can easily see the welfare of soil macroarthropods or nematodes being much larger than that of soil microarthropods, and there is significant uncertainty about whether biofuel subsidies increase or decrease the population of soil macroarthropods/nematodes.

These are shallow investigations and I expect that additional research would change our minds about many of the conclusions that people reached.

This is why I like the intervention "Insecticides and insect welfare: a research agenda". It is explicitly about doing further research.

Thanks for the useful context, Bob. Is there any grant round on soil animals that you would be willing to run for less than 100 k$? It does not have to be about investigating sentience, or comparing the welfare of soil animals with that of humans, and it could be about soil ants or termites.

By "robustly increase welfare", I meant that welfare is expected to increase (under expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU); ignoring moral uncertainty), and this conclusion is not sensitive to close to arbitrary empirical assumptions (for example, whether invertebrates of some species have positive or negative lives). You do not think intervention 14 satisfies this?

Are you confident that biofuel subsidies decrease the population of invertebrates? From Table 1 of the report, accounting only for invertebrates with at least "2mm" (macrofauna), corn with 357 animals per m^2 (= 126 + 231) replaces grassland with 970 animals per m^2 (= 441 + 529), thus leading to 613 fewer animals per m^2 corn (= 970 - 357). However, from Table S4 of Rosenberg et al. (2023) (in the Supplementary Materials), replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands with crops results in 598 more soil ants, termites, and other soil arthropods besides springtails and mites (macroarthropods) per m^2 (= (-1.06 + 1.66)*10^3 + 0.533). The change in the number of animals per m^2 is -1.06 k for soil ants, 1.66 k for soil termites, and 0.533 for soil arthropods besides springtails and mites. Adding up the lower/upper bounds of the 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) in Table S4, I conclude there are 900 to 6.4 k macroarthropods per m^2 in crops, and 172 to 7.00 k in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. There is significant overlap between these ranges. So it is unclear to me whether replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands with crops increases or decreases the number of macroarthropods. The same goes for replacing grassland with crops in the United States (US)?

I also think it is worth looking into the effects of increasing cropland on the number of microarthropods and nematodes. I have see macroarthropods, microarthropods, nematodes, or any combination of these being the major driver of total welfare.

Replacing temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands with crops robustly decreases the number of soil springtails and mites (microarthropods) according to Table S4 of Rosenberg et al. (2023). Adding up the lower/upper bounds of the 95 % CIs, there are 11 k to 37 k soil microarthropods per m^2 in crops, and 70 k to 170 k in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. There is no overlap between these ranges.

However, I believe replacing crops with grassland may increase or decrease the number of soil animals accounting for all animals. The vast majority of soil animals are nematodes, and I am very uncertain about whether replacing crops with grassland increases or decreases the number of soil nematodes.

From Figure 1a of Li et al. (2022), which is below, it is unclear whether cropland has more or fewer soil nematodes than "primary habitat (undisturbed natural habitat)", or "secondary habitat (recovering, previously disturbed natural habitat)". For example, secondary habitat which is "unmanaged (no documented or observed direct human disturbance)" is estimated to have fewer soil nematodes than cropland and pasture which are unmanaged or "managed (more or less disturbed by various human activities like fertilization, tillage, grazing, logging, etc.)".

Figure 7 of the meta-analysis of Pothula et al. (2019), which is below, suggests it is very unclear whether agricultural land has more or fewer soil nematodes than natural or disturbed grassland, or forest.

White (2022) concludes "nematode abundance is higher in managed than unmanaged primary and secondary habitats", which is compatible with crops having more nematodes than grassland.

That said, our confidence in our own position is not high. So, we’d be willing to fund things to challenge our own views: If we had sufficient funding from folks interested in the question, Arthropoda would fund a grant round specifically on soil invertebrate sentience and relevant natural history studies (especially in ways that attempt to capture the likely enormous range of differences between species in this group). Currently, much of our grant-making funds are restricted (at least informally) to farmed insects and shrimp, so it’s not an option.

Could you elaborate on what would be "sufficient funding" for "a grant round specifically on soil invertebrate sentience and relevant natural history studies"?

Thanks for sharing, Bob. The database seems like a great resource to build interest in increasing the welfare of wild animals. Do you think any of the 28 interventions there robustly increase (total) welfare (in expectation) accounting for all animals (in particular, soil animals)? The only one I feel confident achieves this is "Insecticides and insect welfare: a research agenda" (14; here is the report, and here is scoring sheet).

Hi Michael.

Animal agriculture has huge effects on wild animals (land use, climate change) but with unclear sign, so farmed animal work could backfire spectacularly.

Here is an illustration of the above.

Even chicken welfare reforms have effects on land use.

I think chicken welfare reforms may impact soil ants and termites much more than chickens.

Thanks for the great post.

Life spans of insects, however, are quite variable. Carey (2001) notes that the between-group variation is enormous: for herbivores, this range includes aphids with a lifespan of weeks, to xylem-feeding beetles that take several years to reach maturity, to termite queens that can live for decades. This 5000-fold difference in the life spans of insects

Did you mean 500-fold difference? 1 decade is 522 weeks (= 10*365.25/7).

I see. I agree an infinitesimal change to one of 2 exactly identical states could make their expected welfare incomparable under your framework. However, it does not follow that any 2 interventions are incomparable with respect to how much they change expected welfare (across all space and time). I think intervals representing the expected change in welfare are sufficiently narrow for any decision-relevant comparisons to be feasible, although very often with lots of (standard) uncertainty involved.