Assessing long-term effects of artificial light at night on insects: what is missing and how to get there

Abstract

Widespread and significant declines of insect population abundances and biomass are currently one of the most pressing issues in entomology, ecology and conservation biology. It has been suggested that artificial light at night is one major driver behind this trend.

Recent advances in the gathering and analysis of long-term data sets of insect population and biomass trends, however, have mostly focused on the effects of climate change and agricultural intensification.

We posit here that adequate assessment of artificial night at light that would be required to evaluate its role as a driver of insect declines is far from trivial. Currently its implementation into entomological monitoring programmes and long-running ecological experiments is hampered by several challenges that arise due to (i) its relatively late appearance as a biodiversity threat on the research agenda and (ii) the interdisciplinary nature of the research field where biologists, physicists and engineers still need to develop a set of standardised assessment methods that are both biologically meaningful and easy to implement.

As more studies that address these challenges are urgently needed, this article aims to provide a short overview of the few existing studies that have attempted to investigate longer-term effects of artificial light at night on insect populations.

To improve the quality and relevance of studies addressing artificial light at night and its effect on insects, we present a set of best practise recommendations where this field needs to be heading in the coming years and how to achieve it.