Light pollution is gradually reducing insect population
By Patience Asanga
To some people, watching insects dance around a light source at night is always a fascinating sight to behold. Unbeknownst to most admirers, this fluky concert is more or less a dance of doom for most insect species.
A number of insect species like mosquitoes, bugs, moths, and many others have an inseparable connection with bright lights like lamps. This uncanny love for bright lights could be attributed to an insect's perception of light. Some insects view light at a certain wavelength as a safe haven away from their precarious environment, while others like the moths who use the moonlight as a navigational tool are often confused and distracted from their journey at the sight of a brighter light source.
Whichever way it goes, this attraction always spells doom for the nocturnal creatures because they are quite often exposed to their predators or roasted to death by the heat that is being emitted from the light.
Scientists from Tufts University, Medford, studied the impact of artificial light at night on nocturnal and crepuscular animals and discovered that about 30% - 40% of insects that approach street lamps die almost immediately after exposure due to overheating, dehydration, predation, or collision. Those that escape immediate death could be trapped in what the authors describe as a light sink, which could steal their time of locating a mate, thereby reducing their reproductive success. With low reproductive rates and high mortality, insect populations are rapidly declining in light-polluted areas.
Generally, it is known that insects are key players in the terrestrial food web, a shift in their population size towards the negative side should be seen as a matter of deep concern to all as it could have drastic implications for the ecosystem at large.
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