Reclaiming the night sky for moths: what drives the flight-to-light response and how can this be mitigated?

ALAN如何影响当地昆虫种群是环境生物学领域日益关注的话题。最近的研究表明，在过去的50年里，英国33%的飞蛾种类的总丰度下降了。人们对这种生物多样性的悲剧性损失知之甚少，但夜间人造光（ALAN）已被证明会破坏飞蛾的繁殖、幼虫的发育和蛹的滞育。最近的研究也开始表明，这些因素有可能转化为人口水平的影响。飞蛾提供了一系列的生态功能，如授粉，作为猎物支持更高的营养水平，并作为健康生态系统的指标。因此，它们的数量下降可能会产生更广泛的生态后果，因此有必要提出一种解决方案来减少ALAN对生物多样性的影响。迄今为止，不同飞蛾反应的实验比较主要是在单一或一小群物种上进行的。此外，这些实验往往不关注不同波长的重要性，而是对可见光和紫外线光谱（350-700纳米）中的“蓝色”、“红色”等光的颜色进行实验。我们的实验设计将更加机械，并使用一组候选物种来检查飞蛾分类的反应，以了解它们对光强度、波长结构和漫射光与定向光的反应。我们将测试长期存在的假设，即随着波长的减少和强度的增加，趋光性增加。我们将建立一个简单的视网膜电图设置，通过确定眼睛表面感光器反应的大小和速度来评估飞蛾眼睛的视觉能力，从而暗示不同的波长是重要的还是不重要的。这样做的目的是为了演示光谱调整的原理，以尽量减少对飞蛾的影响。通过这一点，我们希望提供和展示一个解决方案，以减少ALAN对昆虫生物多样性的影响。

How ALAN impacts local insect populations is a topic of growing interest within the field of environmental biology. Recent findings have shown that over the last 50 years, 33% of moth species have declined in total abundance in Britain. This tragic loss of biodiversity is poorly understood, but artificial light at night (ALAN) has been shown to disrupt moth reproduction, larval development, and pupal diapause. Recent research has also begun to demonstrate that these factors have potential to translate into population level impacts. Moths provide an array of ecological functions, such as pollination, supporting higher trophic levels as prey, and serving as indicators of a healthy ecosystem. Consequently, their population decline may have wider reaching ecological consequences, and hence there is a need to propose a solution to reduce ALAN's impact on biodiversity.To date, experimental comparisons of different moth responses have largely been conducted on a single or small group of species. Furthermore, these experiments tend not to focus on the significance of different wavelengths, but instead conduct experiments with colours of light, 'blue', 'red' for example, across the visible and UV spectrum (350-700 nm). Our experimental design will be more mechanistic and examine responses across moth taxonomy using a set of candidate species to understand their flight-to-light behaviour in response to light intensity, wavelength structure and diffuse versus directed light. We will test the long-standing hypothesis that phototaxis increases with decreasing wavelength and increasing intensity. We will build a simple electroretinography set-up to assess visual capabilities of moth eyes by determining the magnitude and speed of the photoreceptor responses on the surface of the eye, thereby implicating different wavelengths as important or not. The purpose of this will be to demonstrate the principles of spectral tuning to minimise impacts on moths. Through this, we hope to provide and demonstrate a solution to reduce ALAN's impact on insect biodiversity.