How Light Pollution Affects Insects
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- Опубликовано: 10 июл 2024
- How does human-made light pollution affect nocturnal animals? In this video, Alex Dainis outlines how light pollution could be changing the DNA of bugs. Many animals, including insects, have evolved to be nocturnal, meaning they follow light cues from the sun to be more active during the night. Artificial lights thus can confuse these animals’ bodily systems. One study showed that when crickets were exposed to a pulsing light at night affected the expression of their circadian rhythm genes - the very genes that determine our awake asleep patterns. You can help prevent light pollution by making sure lights are directed down at the ground, using motion sensing lights, and contacting your representatives to advocate for legislature to protect our dark night skies!
Genes in Action: • Genes in Action
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I just wanna say thanks for all the great work you folks at the museum do!! Y'all have gotten generations of kids interested in science and that's amazing!
Thank you so much! It's so important to inspire a love of science in everyone!
Super interesting! I volunteer with a local observatory, so I’d love to hear more about how we can adjust lighting to do what we need it to without causing harm to the natural ecosystem around it.
We've also discovered that insects circle lights at night because of their navigation system. Insects naturally orient themselves by keeping their backs to the moonlight. However, under artificial lights, this behavior causes them to become disoriented and trapped, making it difficult for them to fly away
This is a great point!
This is really interesting, thanks for sharing!
Sound also affects animal behavior in negative ways. Shortly after lockdown measures were in place in 2020, people were reporting cacophonies of bird song like never before. We humans forget that we too are the animals. Increased sounds from traffic affect ones ability to sleep in addition to having deleterious effects on stress and hormone levels.
I live near DC, and I would love to see a night sky. I did an essay in 5th grade about light pollution and how it affected the sky, but I didn’t know then that it fundamentally changed how bugs lived. I might rewrite that essay with the experience and knowledge I have now, even if writing essays aren’t really my forte
Contact your representatives and senators to help ensure we can preserve our dark skies in Massachusetts by filling out this form: bit.ly/4bCWX9z
Now that you mentioned this, I can say I don’t hear the crickets at nighttime like I used to as a child.
What has the Museum of Science done on its own property to combat this issue?
Interesting, but if you can still speak a little bit slower than this, it will be more interesting
They are bugs, i couldn’t give a fluff 🤷♂️