Presentation Details
| Why are animals attracted to deadly artificial light at night? Keren Ighalo, Reuven Dukas. McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada |
Abstract
Many animals are attracted to artificial light at night, which is a major cause of injury and death. Given the negative fitness consequences of light-attraction, natural selection should have favoured the evolution of light avoidance, but there is no evidence that this has occurred. To resolve this conundrum, we suggested that there is a genetic link between light-attraction and some unknown trait with positive effects on fitness. We thus predicted that animals possessing light avoidance would incur some fitness costs. To test this prediction, we artificially selected replicated lineages of light-avoiding fruit flies and assessed their performance in a battery of fitness-related tests. After 25 generations of selection, flies from the light avoiding lineages reduced their light attraction by about 50%. We collected genetic material from the evolved flies and are now in the process of conducting bioinformatic analyses to elucidate the genetic mechanisms underlying light attraction and its associated traits. Our research can help us understand a major cause of wildlife mortality and devise novel ways of reducing it.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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