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Urban street lights are changing animal ecology

Pictures of spreads from New Scientist magazine

You're working on how street lights influence animals on the ground. Tell us more.
We know that aerial invertebrates, such as moths, are attracted to street lights and more can die as a result of flying into the lights, exhaustion or increased predation by other animals including bats. What we don't know is if those casualties have a lasting impact on population numbers.

What did you find?
Because it is quite difficult to study the community composition of aerial invertebrates, we looked at ground-dwelling invertebrates, including beetles, spiders and ants, to see if their communities were affected by proximity to street lighting. We found indications that the lights are having a lasting impact on their distribution.

Are such effects on distribution damaging?
Damage is a bit of an extreme word. It constitutes a change to the environment, but whether that change matters needs to be investigated.

Broadly, how does such light affect animals?
In ...



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