Light pollution is a driver of insect declines

By Avalon C. S. Owens, Précillia Cochard, Joanna Durrant, Bridgette Farnworth, Elizabeth K. Perkin, B. Seymoure. Biological Conservation, 2020

361 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Insects around the world are rapidly declining. Concerns over what this loss means for food security and ecological communities have compelled a growing number of researchers to search for the key drivers behind the declines. Habitat loss, pesticide use, invasive species, and climate change all have likely played a role, but we posit here that artificial light at night (ALAN) is another important—but often overlooked—bringer of the insect apocalypse. We first discuss the history and extent of ALAN, and then present evidence that ALAN has led to insect declines through its interference with the development, movement, foraging, and reproductive success of diverse insect species, as well as its positive effect on insectivore predation. We conclude with a discussion of how artificial lights can be tuned to reduce their impact on vulnerable populations. ALAN is unique among anthropogenic habitat disturbances in that it is fairly easy to ameliorate, and leaves behind no residual effects. Greater recognition of the ways in which ALAN affects insects can help conservationists reduce or eliminate one of the major drivers of insect declines.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b36dfc603ce9e55141af4da34836a39218ebc75

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Citations in the corpus

Further evidence for a global decline of the entomofauna (2020, background): “Light pollution affects movement, reproduction and development of many insect species and can alter predation rates by bats, nocturnal birds, geckos and spiders (Owens et al. 2020).”
Is light pollution driving moth population declines? A review of causal mechanisms across the life cycle (2020, background): “, 2018), and artificial light has been suggested as a driver of insect declines more broadly (Grubisic et al., 2018; Owens et al., 2020).”