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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

18/08/24 11:24 AM IST

All-night streetlights can make leaves inedible to insects

In News
  • Artificial lights that run all night, such as streetlights, can make leaves grow so tough that insects cannot eat them, which could threaten urban food chains, according to a new study.
Major findings
  • The researchers wanted to examine how artificial lights impact the relationship between plants and insects.
  • To do so, they focused on two common species of street tree in Beijing: Japanese pagoda and green ash trees.
  • Although these trees are similar in many ways, Japanese pagoda trees have smaller, softer leaves which insects prefer to munch on.
  • The researchers picked 30 sampling sites on main roads that are usually lit by streetlights all night.
  • They then measured illuminance — the amount of light — at each site and collected around 5,500 leaves to evaluate the impact of light on their traits such as size, toughness, water content, and levels of nutrients and chemical defence compounds.
  • If the leaves were larger, it would mean that plants directed their resources (such as nutrients, water, and energy) to growth.
  • If the leaves were tougher and contained high levels of chemical defence compounds like tannins, it would indicate that the resources were allocated for defence
  • The researchers observed that for both species of trees, the higher the levels of illuminance, the tougher the leaves.
  • The tougher the leaves, the less evidence of insects eating them.
  • The researchers found no sign of insects munching on leaves in areas which were lit the brightest at night.
  • This could be a bad sign for the ecosystem.
  •  Lower levels of herbivory imply lower abundances of herbivorous insects, which could in turn result in lower abundances of predatory insects, insect-eating birds, and so on.
  • The decline of insects is a global pattern observed over recent decades.
Source- Indian Express

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