Light Pollution: Animals affected by HPS lighting interference
By Dave Armstrong - 22 May 2012 23:1:0 GMTAs has been said before, light pollution could be just as severe as any, given its immense significance to living organisms, their physiology, behaviour, reproduction and predator - prey interactions. Discounting the ancient moths to flame (and UV light traps) studies used by entomologists from time immemorial, ground dwellers were targeted.
Their activities have been studied too, but population studies carried out by Messrs. Davies, Bennie and Gaston at Exeter University reveal more about whole ecosystems. Their research has been published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Five major animal groups (see graph below) were found contributing much more to the predator and scavenger communities beneath lit areas. 1194 animals from 60 groups were collected in the pitfall traps in Cornwall, UK. While the composition of plant communities in the habitat did not vary at all significantly, the animals did!
This graph is carefully drawn to show how invertebrate groups are affected. While individual species may be missing at any particular season or time, the assemblage of feeding types remains a suitable grouping for the purposes of investigating such a community. The effects on the ecosystem can now be estimated precisely because the small animals on which any large predators will feed are fully investigated here.
These invertebrates predate each other, but they are only a mouthful to the birds, mammals and one or two amphibians, and snakes (given the fairly restrictive Cornish climate and its fauna). Perhaps those Victorian street urchins around the gas lights were equally subject to exploitation, as Dickens has described to us in such precise detail (Ahh, Oliver!).
No comments:
Post a Comment