Biodiversity loss is accelerating, yet we know little about how these ecosystem disruptions affect human well-being. Ecologists have documented both the importance of bats as natural predators of insects as well as their population declines after the emergence of a wildlife disease, resulting in a potential decline in biological pest control. In this work, I study how species interactions can extend beyond an ecosystem and affect agriculture and human health. I find that farmers compensated for bat decline by increasing their insecticide use by 31.1%. The compensatory increase in insecticide use by farmers adversely affected health—human infant mortality increased by 7.9% in the counties that experienced bat die-offs. These findings provide empirical validation to previous theoretical predictions about how ecosystem disruptions can have meaningful social costs.

中文翻译：

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生态系统破坏的经济影响：替代生物害虫防治的成本


生物多样性的丧失正在加速，但我们对这些生态系统破坏如何影响人类福祉知之甚少。生态学家已经记录了蝙蝠作为昆虫天敌的重要性，以及野生动物疾病出现后蝙蝠数量的下降，导致生物害虫防治的潜在下降。在这项工作中，我研究物种相互作用如何超越生态系统并影响农业和人类健康。我发现农民通过增加 31.1% 的杀虫剂使用量来弥补蝙蝠数量的减少。农民补偿性增加杀虫剂的使用对健康产生了不利影响——在经历过蝙蝠死亡的县，人类婴儿死亡率增加了 7.9%。这些发现为之前关于生态系统破坏如何产生有意义的社会成本的理论预测提供了实证验证。