How Do Street Lamps Threaten the Life of Insects?

Although it may sound surprising at first, street lights are of great importance to people around the world, especially insects. It seems to disrupt the order of nature.

Bride, How is this possible? let’s see.

According to a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the insect population in the world is decreasing day by day.

The reason for this is that street lights, which contribute to increased night vision, and insects. find food in different places or go hungry to be an obstacle. Wanting to examine this issue in depth, the team collects samples from the two most common tree species found in Beijing.

These two tree species, Japanese pagoda and green ash, survive along constantly illuminated main roads. Scientists in every tree area measures light levels and compares these with the properties of leaves.

Among these features, trees size, water content, nutrients, durability and chemical defenses It is located.

Research shows that artificial lighting at night increases the resilience of leaves.

The fact that the leaves are more durable means that insects can use them as food. can’t benefit from them It means. So the harder a leaf is, the less damage it gets from insects. Therefore, insects cannot benefit from the leaves.

In this case, it seems that trees spend most of the energy they receive from street lights to build stronger defenses against insects. In addition, the leaves cannot receive nutrients, different problems It also brings with it.

For example, lower levels of herbivory mean fewer herbivorous insects, which in turn means fewer predators. With the decrease in the number of insects and insect-eating birds results.

In summary, this break in the food chain decreased insect activityThis causes the nutrient cycle to not progress as it should at different levels of the ecosystem.

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