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Why flying insects gather at artificial light

nature.com

81–90 of 183 posts

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is more scientific than testing the hypothesis yourself? Professionals doing it? Who know how to do it properly better than laymen?

With respect, that is the complete opposite of science! The only difference, the only barrier, between you and a 'scientist' is that someone else took that step to do it themselves. Tomorrow you could be a scientist - next time you have an idea! You don't have to publish in Nature to be a scientist. Really, I mean that in the best way. I am a scientist every day. It's powerful, it's joyful, it's curious and explorato…

[deleted]

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#82
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I was hoping for something more scientific. I read a bit about that, and it seems like insects are more affected by smaller wavelengths (UV/blue rather than yellow/red) and some species polarized light. But then if we know it, why don't we engineer the street lights to not attract insects?

> Well I was hoping for something more scientific. What is more scientific than testing the hypothesis yourself? That's science; that's its essential joy and spirit and nature. Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of…

Don't get me wrong: I think you are right, and I should try it myself. But I was hoping to maybe get some insights from somebody in the field.

I have actually been looking for literature about that, and I don't know (maybe I missed a lot) but it did not really feel like there was a definitive answer to that.

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#83
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well I was hoping for something more scientific. What is more scientific than testing the hypothesis yourself? That's science; that's its essential joy and spirit and nature. Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of…

Don't get me wrong: I think you are right, and I should try it myself. But I was hoping to maybe get some insights from somebody in the field. I have actually been looking for literature about that, and I don't know (maybe I missed a lot) but it did not really feel like there was a definitive answer to that.

> ... I should try it myself. But I was hoping to maybe get some insights from somebody in the field.

Yes, of course. Please don't mistake my enthusiasm for some imperative or criticism. I was just taking the opportunity to make a point in HN generally. I look up the existing literature all the time. What a waste of all that effort otherwise!

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#84
post #38

It’s always amusing in the garden center at Home Depot looking at the enormous spider webs (and the fat spiders) around their sodium vapor lamps. It must be that the number of calories required to produce bioluminescence to create this effect must be greater than the calories that could be derived from hunting that way. But if someone else provided that free energy for hunting…

Interesting. I sometimes wonder how they end up near the lights: there wouldn't seem to be a light source at night for most of their evolution. Maybe they used the moon in the background. But is it correct to assume that, if something is naturally possible (e.g., bioluminescence), and provides significant evolutionary advantage, the species will evolve it? If so, why are we the only intelligent ones (so far)? Why did…

My guess is that apes with similar interests started socializing because it was enjoyable and more stimulating than hanging out with apes who could not/would not perceive the nuances of the world the same way.

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#85
post #38

It’s always amusing in the garden center at Home Depot looking at the enormous spider webs (and the fat spiders) around their sodium vapor lamps. It must be that the number of calories required to produce bioluminescence to create this effect must be greater than the calories that could be derived from hunting that way. But if someone else provided that free energy for hunting…

This spider-webs-covering-lights phenomenon is replaced over and over and over in every Northern Ontario community. It was unreal when I worked at a camp on Lake-of-the-Woods.

I am sure there was enough webs that you could stuff several pillows with them.

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#86
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my understanding too. The way I thought about this before was that normally an insect would ‘keep the moon’ on one side to navigate straight, but artificial light messes that up and they end up spiraling around those light sources. Which seems exactly the behavior that they have demonstrated in the research.

> they end up spiraling around those light sources What I'm struggling to understand is how the insects then reach so close to the artificial light. Why don't they spiral the artificial light from a great distance like 1 metre or 2 metres away? I see the insects hovering like millimetres or centimetres away from artificial light.

The larger the distance, the more it actually works as a navigational source so you won't see those insects since they are navigating just fine.

The insects you see are the ones that happen to get too close and thus their nav gets 'jammed'.

It's similar to planes navigating by compass. Works great, until you go up to the arctic circle, then you better have another nav source or you too will be flying in circles.

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#87
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it confirms that. It seems to be one of the popular theories they investigated. Later they say - "In both field and lab conditions, insects rarely head directly towards, but consistently fly orthogonal to the light source. This refutes the fundamental premise of an escape response." "An insect should keep a light source at a fixed visual location for maintaining its heading. Switching light position (Su…

I think you're misunderstanding GP. This definitely refutes the theory that insects are trying to escape towards the light, because, as the article shows, insects don't head directly for the light, but instead move orthogonal to it. But this doesn't mean they can't use moonlight to help with flying. The theory, as I understand it, is that they use a distant light source -- e.g. the daytime sky -- to maintain altitude…

Okay, something I'm confused about. "Dorsal side" means, as far as I can tell, your back. So if a fly is keeping its dorsal side facing the moon, that means its back is pointing at the moon.

When the moon's directly overhead, this makes lots of sense. Fly goes around wherever. But if the moon's low on the eastern horizon, would we expect flies to mostly be facing upwards, and mostly flying west?

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#88
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine you were an insect and you would use the moon for navigation. Would you really be flying directly towards moon? No, right? Then how could someone think that insects flying directly towards artificial light source is the basis for the theory that insects use moon as navigational aid? If you're flying parallel to the ground (horizontally), you'd want the moon to be where your back is and you'd have a good cha…

What’s so special about keeping it ‘where your back is’? The moon is rarely located directly overhead. Wherever it is, keeping it in a fixed relative position will get you going in a straight line. The article talks about the ‘dorsal flight response’ being more about the overall alignment to the sky hemisphere, not the moon specifically. “the brightest part of the visual field has been the sky, and thus it is a robus…

> What’s so special about keeping it ‘where your back is’?

Since we're to imagine the grandparent flying around like an insect. I imagined them as person flying but with insect wings. Since we're mammals with eyes pointing straight ahead, as opposed with them being on the side of our heads, we'd need some light sensor on our back to ensure we're flying straight at night and keeping the moon above, as opposed to having to look behind every so often to ensure the moon is still there :-)

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is more scientific than testing the hypothesis yourself? Professionals doing it? Who know how to do it properly better than laymen?

With respect, that is the complete opposite of science! The only difference, the only barrier, between you and a 'scientist' is that someone else took that step to do it themselves. Tomorrow you could be a scientist - next time you have an idea! You don't have to publish in Nature to be a scientist. Really, I mean that in the best way. I am a scientist every day. It's powerful, it's joyful, it's curious and explorato…

You're likely describing citizen science and engineering, which cannot really be considered for publication in Nature.

The work here represents many thousands if not millions of hours of accumulated scientific skill in building experiments that are likely to produce useful conclusions, rather than falsely rejecting the null hypothesis.

I've worked in citizen science and I have even done some exciting stuff in my garage, which attracted the world's leading researcher in my area of interest. The first thing I'd need to do with my tech is to bring it to his lab and reproduce it on science-grade equipment. then we would need to come up with good hypotheses we could test, and spend an enormous amount of time designing protocols, and debugging lab details. All of that comes before even thinking about writing a manuscript that would be accepted in nature, which is one of the most prestigious journals with enormous readership.

I don't want to discourage young folks who want to get into science, but the reality is that the vast majority of real science is dull work, such as requesting money, writing presentations to convince people you're right, and debugging experiments. I'm not defending this as the way it should be, but observing the reality of the situation. I have actually met a very small number of people who managed to turn citizen science into Big Science and get published, but they are a much smaller group than the folks who do bad citizen science in their garages and get attention on sites like Hackaday.

Re: Why flying insects gather at artificial light

#90
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, that is the complete opposite of science! The only difference, the only barrier, between you and a 'scientist' is that someone else took that step to do it themselves. Tomorrow you could be a scientist - next time you have an idea! You don't have to publish in Nature to be a scientist. Really, I mean that in the best way. I am a scientist every day. It's powerful, it's joyful, it's curious and explorato…

You're likely describing citizen science and engineering, which cannot really be considered for publication in Nature. The work here represents many thousands if not millions of hours of accumulated scientific skill in building experiments that are likely to produce useful conclusions, rather than falsely rejecting the null hypothesis. I've worked in citizen science and I have even done some exciting stuff in my gara…

> You're likely describing citizen science and engineering

That's what you are describing. If you read my comments, I am not talking about that (though I don't object to it), and my main point is that science is not defined by the type of work that gets published in journals, or by whatever qualifies as 'citizen science'.

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