The dark side of light: how artificial lighting is harming the natural world

Irwin, Aisling

doi:10.1038/d41586-018-00665-7

Cited by 67 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…irradiance; 1.8% per year between 2012 and 2016) (Kyba et al., 2017). As artificial light at night could potentially affect many ecological processes, from individuals via communities to ecosystems (Bennie et al., 2015; Gaston, 2018; Hölker et al., 2010; Irwin, 2018; Maggi et al., 2019), it has emerged as an important topic in ecological research (Davies & Smyth, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomass responses of widely and less‐widely naturalized alien plants to artificial light at night

2021

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Artificial light at night has rapidly increased during the last century, and could potentially affect many ecological processes, from individuals via communities to entire ecosystems. Recent research has shown that artificial light at night may not only affect the behaviour of animals but also growth of plants and vegetation composition. However, it is not known yet whether artificial light at night may also affect other global change components such as plant invasions. Here, we tested how naturalized alien plants respond to artificial light at night, and particularly whether widely naturalized species differ from less‐widely naturalized species in their response to artificial light at night. We grew nine taxonomically related pairs of widely naturalized and less‐widely naturalized species alone and in competition, with native plants with and without artificial light at night. We found that in the competition treatment, artificial light at night significantly increased the total biomass production per pot, but not the biomass ratio between the naturalized alien plants and the native competitors. Interestingly, although the less‐widely naturalized species produced overall significantly less biomass than the widely naturalized species, there was a trend that the less‐widely naturalized species increased their biomass more strongly in response to artificial light at night than the widely naturalized species did (p = 0.07). Synthesis. Our study shows that although widely naturalized plants produce more biomass than less‐widely naturalized plants across different environmental conditions, they took less advantage of artificial light at night. This suggests that artificial light at night might lead to increased spread of currently less‐widely naturalized species, at least when artificial light at night continues to increase.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomass responses of widely and less‐widely naturalized alien plants to artificial light at night

2021

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“…ALAN is particularly common along roadsides 6,8 , which are also important invasion corridors for alien plants 50,51 . Indeed it was recently shown that the presence of an invasive grass species was positively associated with the presence of streetlights 17 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matthew effect: common species become more common and rare ones become more rare in response to artificial light at night

Liu

Speißer

Knop

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Artificial light at night (ALAN) has been and still is rapidly spreading, and has become an important component of global change. Although numerous studies have tested its potential biological and ecological impacts on animals, fewer have tested its impacts on plants, and very few studies have tested whether it affects alien and native plants differently. Furthermore, common plant species, and particularly common alien species, are often found to benefit more from additional resources than rare native and rare alien species. Whether this is also the case with regard to increasing light due to ALAN is still unknown. Here, we tested how ALAN affects the performance of common and rare alien and native plants directly and indirectly via flying insects. We grew five common alien, six rare alien, five common native and four rare native plant species under four combinations of two ALAN (no ALAN vs ALAN) and two insect-exclusion (no exclusion vs exclusion) treatments, and compared their biomass production. We found that common plant species, irrespective of whether they are alien or native, produced significantly more biomass than rare species, particularly under ALAN. Furthermore, alien species tended to show a slightly stronger positive response to ALAN than native species (marginally significant interaction between origin and ALAN, p = 0.079). Our study shows that common plant species benefited more from ALAN than rare ones. This might lead to shifts in plant diversity and vegetation composition, further propelling global biodiversity decline, when ALAN becomes more widespread. In addition, the slightly more positive response of alien species indicates that ALAN might increase the risk of alien plant invasions.

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“…Generally, white light can be generated from a variety of sources, such as the Sun and many other artificial sources. 40,41 White light may be used for lighting in our daily life, but it can also be applied in another scenario such as optical communication. [42][43][44]…”

Section: What Is Ambient White Lightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colloidal quantum dot hybrids: an emerging class of materials for ambient lighting

Feng

et al. 2020

J. Mater. Chem. C

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The dark side of light: how artificial lighting is harming the natural world

Cited by 67 publications

References 12 publications

Biomass responses of widely and less‐widely naturalized alien plants to artificial light at night

Biomass responses of widely and less‐widely naturalized alien plants to artificial light at night

Matthew effect: common species become more common and rare ones become more rare in response to artificial light at night

Colloidal quantum dot hybrids: an emerging class of materials for ambient lighting

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