Wednesday September 25, 2024
Science Daily —
Artificial light at night (ALAN) pollutes the environment by adding luminescence to places that would otherwise be dark at nighttime. ALAN exists outdoors through the lights that brighten streets, buildings, and industrial areas all night; and ALAN exists indoors through the devices that hold our attention into the evening. ALAN is known to impact most organisms by disrupting the natural rhythms of biological processes, which are coordinated by cycles of light and dark.
“Sleep is one of the main processes of animals that is disrupted by ALAN, so we were curious to know what that means for their ability to navigate their lives. In other words, what does it mean for their behavior?” says Wei Wei Li, the study’s first author who did the work as a doctoral student in MPI-AB.
“The light levels that we used in our study matched what is already shining into the homes of animals at night through the many sources we place outdoors. And we found extremely strong and clear negative effects on the behavior of fish and their offspring after only a few bright nights.”