Reclaiming the night sky for moths: what drives the flight-to-light response and how can this be mitigated?

为飞蛾夺回夜空：是什么驱动了飞向光反应以及如何减轻这种反应？

• 批准号: 2873554
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2873554
• 关键词: Reclaiming; night; sky; moths; what

How ALAN impacts local insect populations is a topic of growing interest within the field of environmental biology. Recent findings have shown that over the last 50 years, 33% of moth species have declined in total abundance in Britain. This tragic loss of biodiversity is poorly understood, but artificial light at night (ALAN) has been shown to disrupt moth reproduction, larval development, and pupal diapause. Recent research has also begun to demonstrate that these factors have potential to translate into population level impacts. Moths provide an array of ecological functions, such as pollination, supporting higher trophic levels as prey, and serving as indicators of a healthy ecosystem. Consequently, their population decline may have wider reaching ecological consequences, and hence there is a need to propose a solution to reduce ALAN's impact on biodiversity.To date, experimental comparisons of different moth responses have largely been conducted on a single or small group of species. Furthermore, these experiments tend not to focus on the significance of different wavelengths, but instead conduct experiments with colours of light, 'blue', 'red' for example, across the visible and UV spectrum (350-700 nm). Our experimental design will be more mechanistic and examine responses across moth taxonomy using a set of candidate species to understand their flight-to-light behaviour in response to light intensity, wavelength structure and diffuse versus directed light. We will test the long-standing hypothesis that phototaxis increases with decreasing wavelength and increasing intensity. We will build a simple electroretinography set-up to assess visual capabilities of moth eyes by determining the magnitude and speed of the photoreceptor responses on the surface of the eye, thereby implicating different wavelengths as important or not. The purpose of this will be to demonstrate the principles of spectral tuning to minimise impacts on moths. Through this, we hope to provide and demonstrate a solution to reduce ALAN's impact on insect biodiversity.

在环境生物学领域，艾伦如何影响当地昆虫种群是一个越来越兴趣的话题。最近的发现表明，在过去的50年中，英国有33％的飞蛾物种的总丰度下降。这种悲惨的生物多样性丧失知之甚少，但夜间（Alan）的人造光已被证明会破坏飞蛾繁殖，幼虫发育和pup骨滞性。最近的研究还开始证明，这些因素有可能转化为人口水平的影响。飞蛾提供了一系列生态功能，例如授粉，支持较高的营养水平，并作为健康生态系统的指标。因此，他们的人口下降可能会带来更广泛的生态后果，因此有必要提出一种解决方案来减少艾伦对生物多样性的影响。至今，对不同的蛾反应的实验比较已经在很大程度上对单个或小型物种进行了。此外，这些实验倾向于不关注不同波长的重要性，而是用光线，“蓝色”，“红色”的颜色进行实验，例如在可见的和紫外线谱（350-700 nm）中进行。我们的实验设计将更具机械性，并使用一组候选物种来检查蛾类分类法的响应，以了解其飞行到光的行为，以响应光强度，波长结构和弥漫性与定向光。我们将测试以下长期假设，即光疗随波长降低和强度增加而增加。我们将通过确定眼表面上光感受器响应的幅度和速度来构建简单的电视图设置，以评估蛾眼的视觉能力，从而暗示不同的波长是否重要。这样做的目的是展示光谱调整的原理，以最大程度地减少对飞蛾的影响。通过此，我们希望提供并展示一种解决艾伦对昆虫生物多样性的影响的解决方案。