Tuning the white light spectrum of light emitting diode lamps to reduce attraction of nocturnal arthropods

Abstract

Artificial lighting allows humans to be active at night, but has many unintended consequences, including interference with ecological processes, disruption of circadian rhythms and increased exposure to insect vectors of diseases. Although ultraviolet and blue light are usually most attractive to arthropods, degree of attraction varies among orders. With a focus on future indoor lighting applications, we manipulated the spectrum of white lamps to investigate the influence of spectral composition on number of arthropods attracted. We compared numbers of arthropods captured at three customizable light-emitting diode (LED) lamps (3510, 2704 and 2728 K), two commercial LED lamps (2700 K), two commercial compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs; 2700 K) and a control. We configured the three custom LEDs to minimize invertebrate attraction based on published attraction curves for honeybees and moths. Lamps were placed with pan traps at an urban and two rural study sites in Los Angeles, California. For all invertebrate orders combined, our custom LED configurations were less attractive than the commercial LED lamps or CFLs of similar colour temperatures. Thus, adjusting spectral composition of white light to minimize attracting nocturnal arthropods is feasible; not all lights with the same colour temperature are equally attractive to arthropods.

Quantifying the attractiveness of broad‐spectrum street lights to aerial nocturnal insects

“…Light intensity was not equal for all street lights, as we compared lighting technologies based on their real‐life application for human needs. However, these differences in intensity are unlikely to have influenced insect attraction as much as spectral differences (Longcore et al., ). Despite both emitting white light, the MH caught approximately five times as many insects as the LED light.…”

The biological impacts of artificial light at night: the research challenge

“…With respect to the ALAN itself, the challenges are to determine: (i) the form of dose (intensity)-response relationships for a range of biological impacts of ALAN-almost exclusively, studies to date have contrasted predominantly two ALAN treatments (ALAN versus no ALAN), preventing determination of thresholds and the overall shapes of dose-response functions; and (ii) the form of spectral-response relationships for a range of biological impacts of ALAN-again, as with dose-response relationships, the state-of-the-art experiments are employing just a few spectral treatments [68,71,73] or typical light sources for outdoor lighting with different colour spectra (see [74,75]). Understanding of both dose-response and spectral-response relationships, and their interaction, will be critical to providing the best advice on how to limit the negative biological impacts of ALAN.…”

Connecting spectral radiometry of anthropogenic light sources to the visual ecology of organisms

“…Most interestingly, humans see a much different nocturnal urban environment than other animals as humans see most lights as the same color, yet birds and insects are likely seeing a myriad of differently colored lights in their environment. Thus, humans have altered the natural nightscape with numerous colors of lights, even though previous research has assumed that within type light sources are the same color (Longcore et al ., ; Van Langevelde et al ., ; Donners et al ., ). All light types varied in overall brightness, however, as eyes adapt to light conditions through various mechanisms (e.g.…”

“…Although numerous studies have investigated behavioral responses to different light sources (Langevelde et al ., ; van Grunsven et al ., ; Longcore et al ., ; Spoelstra et al ., ), few studies have investigated varied spectral signatures in the environment, see Davies et al . (); Donners et al .…”