Abstract
Abstract Sodium street lights, dominated by long wavelengths of light, are being replaced by broad‐spectrum, white lights globally, in particular light‐emitting diodes (LEDs). These white lights typically require less energy to operate and are therefore considered “eco‐friendly”. However, little attention has been paid to the impacts white lights may have upon local wildlife populations. We compared insect attraction to orange (high‐pressure sodium, HPS) and white (metal halide, MH and LED) street lights experimentally using portable street lights and custom‐made flight intercept traps. Significantly more (greater than five times as many) insects were attracted to white MH street lights than white (4,250 K) LED and HPS lights. There was no statistical difference in the numbers of insects attracted to LED and HPS lights for most taxa caught. However, rarefaction shows a greater diversity of insects caught at LED than HPS lights. Policy implications. With the current, large‐scale conversion to white light‐emitting diode (LED) lighting, our results give insight into how changes to street light technology may affect wildlife populations and communities. We recommend avoiding metal halide light installations as they attract many more insects than competing technologies. We highlight the need to tailor LED lighting to prevent disturbances across multiple insect taxa.
Highlights
Street light technology has changed radically over the last century (Fouquet & Pearson, 2006)
As many existing street lights are being updated by retrofitting of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or metal halide (MH) units rather than entire luminaire replacement, this is an accurate reflection of current street lighting practice
Pairwise comparisons show the MH attracted significantly more insects than all other lights, but there was no significant difference in insect attraction between LED and high-pressure sodium (HPS) lights
Summary
Street light technology has changed radically over the last century (Fouquet & Pearson, 2006). Sodium street lights have begun to be replaced by metal halide (MH) lights and by energy-saving, light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Both technologies typically emit broad-spectrum, white light, their emission spectra usually differ. While investigating insect attraction to street lights at a single site adjacent to the river Rhine in Germany, Eisenbeis and Eick (2011) found that traps on LED and MH street lights caught an average of 12.1 and 50.9 insects per trap night respectively. They concluded that LEDs appear to be “very insect friendly” (Eisenbeis & Eick, 2011)
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