Data from: The interface of ecological novelty and behavioral context in the formation of ecological traps

Ecological traps occur when rapid environmental change causes animals to actually prefer inferior habitats. Traps increase the likelihood of species extinction, but our understanding of how evolved behavioral algorithms interface with increasingly novel ecosystems to trigger them remains limited. Both polarized and unpolarized light are increasingly common forms of light pollution known to cause maladaptive behavior for both water-seeking and entirely terrestrial insects by maladaptively triggering innate habitat selection and navigation preferences, respectively. We designed a nocturnal, field-based experiment to investigate how diverse nocturnal insect taxa use and contextualize these cues when they are placed in evolutionarily novel proximity, and so test the hypothesis that cues that originally evolved to guide navigation behavior can enhance or hinder the ability of different nocturnal insects to avoid maladaptive behavior within the context of habitat selection. Unpolarized light created more attractive ecological traps, even for aquatic taxa known to use polarized light as their sole habitat selection cue. We found that these cues could, in aquatic taxa, act both additively and synergistically to increase the attraction of ecological traps. While one family showed evidence of partitioning their response to these 2 forms of light within their respective behavioral contexts (navigation, habitat selection), our results indicate that the novel proximity of cues from separate behavioral contexts can act to enhance the attractiveness of ecological traps within a focal context.

生态陷阱（ecological trap）指环境快速变化时，动物反而更偏好劣质栖息地的现象。这类陷阱会提升物种灭绝的概率，但学界对演化而来的行为算法如何与日益新颖的生态系统交互作用并触发生态陷阱的相关认知仍十分有限。偏振光（polarized light）与非偏振光（unpolarized light）均为愈发普遍的光污染（light pollution）形式，已知它们会分别通过异常触发先天的栖息地选择与导航偏好，对趋水昆虫和完全陆生昆虫造成适应不良行为。本研究设计了一项夜间野外实验，以探究多样的夜行性昆虫类群在演化层面的全新近距离接触情境下，如何利用并整合这两类光信号；同时以此检验假说：原本演化用于引导导航行为的信号，在栖息地选择的情境中，能够增强或阻碍不同夜行性昆虫规避适应不良行为的能力。研究发现，非偏振光会形成吸引力更强的生态陷阱，即便是那些已知将偏振光作为唯一栖息地选择信号的水生类群也不例外。我们还观察到，在水生类群中，这两类信号可通过加性效应与协同效应共同提升生态陷阱的吸引力。尽管有一个昆虫科群展现出了在各自行为情境（导航、栖息地选择）中对这两类光信号进行响应区分的证据，但我们的研究结果表明，来自不同行为情境的信号在演化层面的全新近距离共存状态，能够在特定行为情境下增强生态陷阱的吸引力。