Professor Bruce Robertson and Two Bard Grads Coauthor a New Paper on Potential Impact of Light Pollution for Aquatic Insects
Published in Animal Behavior, their paper “Ultraviolet polarized light pollution and evolutionary traps for aquatic insects” surveyed the natural and artificial environment to understand the properties of objects that can polarize natural and artificial sources of UV light. They conducted a field experiment to test the importance of UV polarized light in guiding habitat selection behaviour in six families of aquatic insects. The results highlight a quantitatively new type of ecological light pollution capable of creating evolutionary traps for polarotactic insects at night, or even during the day.
Post Date: 11-01-2021