Dietary melatonin supplementation mitigates the negative effects of artificial light at night in the Pacific field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is linked to negative behavioural and physiological consequences in animals. A potential mechanism for these adverse effects is ALAN’s inhibition of melatonin synthesis, a zeitgeber for cellular processes, and a powerful antioxidant. Accordingly, melatonin supplementation can ameliorate ALAN-linked pathologies. Most studies expose animals to ALAN across their whole lifespan or a single life stage, but many nocturnal species experience variable exposure across heterogeneously lit landscapes. We investigated the effects of ALAN during both early- and late-juvenile development on adult reproduction in the Pacific field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus, and whether dietary melatonin supplementation could mitigate these effects. We found life-stage-specific developmental effects of ALAN. Life-long ALAN exposure accelerated juvenile development, yet did not affect late-juvenile, total development time or adult body mass. Moreover, we confirm the potential for me..., , # Dietary melatonin supplementation mitigates the negative effects of artificial light at night in the Pacific field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bwc4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bwc4)

## Description of the data and file structure

Authors: Nicola-Anne J. Rutkowski, Théresa M. Jones, Kathryn B. McNamara

The dataset contains data from physiological assays (early survival, development, body weight, reproductive investment of males and females).

### Files and variables

#### File: Rutkowski_et_al__2025.Rmd

**Description:** R code

The code has been broken down into chunks in order to make it more user friendly, before trying to replicate any analysis ensure the additional file (opt.expon.mod.r) is loaded otherwise the data analysis will not run.

#### File: Rutkowski_et_al._2025.xlsx

**Description:** Data from experiment, three tabs.

##### Variables

* **Tab one ('full dataset') contains the all of the specific information for each indivi...,