Hormonal regulation of parental care in insects: a call for exploring vulnerabilities to anthropogenic pollutants

Global insect populations are declining at an alarming rate, threatening biodiversity and the ecosystem services on which humans depend. One potential driver of this decline is the alteration of key biological functions, including parental care, by anthropogenic factors such as chemical pollution and exposure to endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). This review synthesizes current knowledge on how EDCs may affect insect parental care, highlighting major gaps and opportunities for research. We first discuss the taxonomic bias in EDC research and its implications for understanding insect susceptibility. We then summarize what is known about the hormonal regulation of insect parental care, emphasizing that current knowledge is limited to a few species, a few behaviors, and primarily juvenile hormone. Next, we examine the sparse evidence for direct or indirect effects of chemical pollutants on parental behaviors. Finally, we propose five research priorities to elucidate the interplay between EDC exposure, hormonal regulation, and parental care in insects: clarifying hormonal mechanisms, applying unbiased -omics approaches combined with functional analyses, identifying EDCs most likely to disrupt care, expanding taxonomic and behavioral coverage, and linking individual-level effects to population outcomes. Addressing these priorities is timely to establish causal links between hormones, behavior, and pollutants, providing essential insights to predict and mitigate the impacts of EDCs on insect populations, ecosystem functioning, and evolutionary dynamics.