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Ah yes, another animal we manage to torture. Will we try to fix it now we know? Guess not.


A complete global proper fix probably not, but at least in my area things are now better than a couple of years ago. The main reasons for the changes were mostly economical, but still.. Street lighting is being turned off during the night now, and is being replaced with LEDs with armatures which provide a focused beam. So compared with traditional lighting which was on all night and would illuminate everything within a fairly large radius, and alos upwards, I'd say it's positive overall.

Not really related to this particular reasearch, but anecdotally I seemed to be able to confirm https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/12/8/734 "Artificial Light Lowers Mate Attraction Success in Female Glow-Worms" in that a bigger area of my garden is now less illuminated during the time of the night crucial for glow-worms (because of the focused LED beam), and that area had a higher attraction success; assuming no other factors affect that. But it's really striking how in the well-lit parts females would be sitting on their spot in the grass, day after day, glowing a little bit less everyday towards the end, and then eventually disappear. Likely into death. Which just doesn't seem to happen at all in the darker area.




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