University of Bern, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Baltzerstrasse 6, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, UMR 7204 CNRS-MNHN, 61 Rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France.
Nature. 2017 Aug 10;548(7666):206-209. doi: 10.1038/nature23288. Epub 2017 Aug 2.
Pollinators are declining worldwide and this has raised concerns for a parallel decline in the essential pollination service they provide to both crops and wild plants. Anthropogenic drivers linked to this decline include habitat changes, intensive agriculture, pesticides, invasive alien species, spread of pathogens and climate change. Recently, the rapid global increase in artificial light at night has been proposed to be a new threat to terrestrial ecosystems; the consequences of this increase for ecosystem function are mostly unknown. Here we show that artificial light at night disrupts nocturnal pollination networks and has negative consequences for plant reproductive success. In artificially illuminated plant-pollinator communities, nocturnal visits to plants were reduced by 62% compared to dark areas. Notably, this resulted in an overall 13% reduction in fruit set of a focal plant even though the plant also received numerous visits by diurnal pollinators. Furthermore, by merging diurnal and nocturnal pollination sub-networks, we show that the structure of these combined networks tends to facilitate the spread of the negative consequences of disrupted nocturnal pollination to daytime pollinator communities. Our findings demonstrate that artificial light at night is a threat to pollination and that the negative effects of artificial light at night on nocturnal pollination are predicted to propagate to the diurnal community, thereby aggravating the decline of the diurnal community. We provide perspectives on the functioning of plant-pollinator communities, showing that nocturnal pollinators are not redundant to diurnal communities and increasing our understanding of the human-induced decline in pollinators and their ecosystem service.
传粉媒介在全球范围内减少,这引起了人们对它们为作物和野生植物提供的必要传粉服务平行减少的担忧。与这种减少相关的人为驱动因素包括生境变化、集约农业、农药、入侵外来物种、病原体传播和气候变化。最近,有人提出,夜间人工光的迅速全球增加对陆地生态系统构成了新的威胁;这种增加对生态系统功能的影响大多未知。在这里,我们表明,夜间人工光会破坏夜间传粉网络,并对植物繁殖成功产生负面影响。在人工照明的植物-传粉媒介群落中,与黑暗区域相比,夜间对植物的访问减少了 62%。值得注意的是,这导致一种重点植物的果实设定总体减少了 13%,尽管该植物也收到了大量的日间传粉者的访问。此外,通过合并昼夜传粉亚网络,我们表明,这些组合网络的结构往往有利于将夜间传粉中断的负面影响传播到日间传粉者社区。我们的研究结果表明,夜间人工光对传粉是一种威胁,夜间人工光对夜间传粉的负面影响预计会传播到日间群落,从而加剧日间群落的减少。我们提供了关于植物-传粉媒介群落功能的观点,表明夜间传粉媒介对于日间群落并非多余,并提高了我们对传粉媒介及其生态系统服务因人类活动而减少的理解。