Street lamps are hurting pollination by distracting insects
Street lamps could be harming agriculture, according to a new study that looks at the effects of nighttime light pollution on pollinators.
Pollinators are animals that fertilize plants by bringing pollen from one to another. The number of pollinators has been going down worldwide, but most research has focused on daytime pollinators like bees. There’s been very little published about nighttime pollinators, like certain moths and beetles, until now. For a study published today in Nature Ecology, scientists set up street lamps in seven meadows that had never been subjected to artificial light before. These meadows, compared to the seven control meadows without the lamps, had fewer visits by pollinators, and the plants produced less fruit.
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