Lifelong exposure to artificial light at night impacts stridulation and locomotion activity patterns in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus

This dataset contains data from a laboratory experiments described in the paper: "Levy, K., Wegrzyn, Y., Efronny, R., Barnea, A., & Ayali, A. 2021 Lifelong exposure to artificial light at night impacts stridulation and locomotion activity patterns in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. Proc. R. Soc. B 20211626. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.162". Artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasing worldwide,with most of the world population living under light-polluted skies. Growing awareness of the harmful effects of ALAN calls for more comprehensive understanding of these effects. The stridulation and locomotion patterns of adult male crickets reared under different lifelong ALAN intensities were monitored simultaneously for five consecutive days in custom-made anechoic chambers. Activity periods and acrophases were compared between the experimental groups. Control crickets exhibited a robust rhythm, stridulating at night and demonstrating locomotor activity during the day. In contrast, ALAN affected both the relative level and timing of the crickets' nocturnal and diurnal activity. ALAN induced free-running patterns, manifested in significant changes in the median and variance of the activity periods, and even arrhythmic behavior. The magnitude of disruption was light intensity dependent, revealing an increase in the difference between the activity periods calculated for stridulation and locomotion in the same individual. Our results demonstrate that ecologically-relevant ALAN intensities affect crickets' behavioral patterns, and may lead to decoupling of locomotion and stridulation behaviors at the individual level, and to loss of synchronization at the population level.

本数据集包含来自下述论文所载实验室实验的相关数据：Levy, K.、Wegrzyn, Y.、Efronny, R.、Barnea, A.及Ayali, A.于2021年发表的《终身暴露于夜间人工光（artificial light at night, ALAN）影响双斑蟋蟀（Gryllus bimaculatus）的鸣唱与运动活动模式》，刊载于《英国皇家学会学报B辑：生物科学》2021卷，文章编号2021162，DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.162。
夜间人工光（ALAN）在全球范围内持续增加，当前全球绝大多数人口生活在光污染的夜空环境之下。随着人们对夜间人工光有害影响的认知日益加深，亟需对其效应开展更全面的解析。
研究人员在定制的无回声室（anechoic chambers）中，对终身暴露于不同强度夜间人工光的成年雄性双斑蟋蟀，连续5天同时监测其鸣唱与运动活动模式，并比较了各实验组间的活动周期与活动相位峰值（acrophases）。
对照组蟋蟀呈现出稳定的生物节律：夜间进行鸣唱活动，日间表现出运动行为。与之相反，夜间人工光同时影响了蟋蟀昼夜活动的相对水平与时间分布。
夜间人工光诱导出自由运转节律模式（free-running patterns），具体表现为活动周期的中位数与方差发生显著变化，甚至引发无节律行为（arrhythmic behavior）。节律紊乱的程度随光照强度变化而不同，研究发现同一蟋蟀个体中，基于鸣唱与运动活动计算得到的活动周期差值显著增大。
本研究结果表明，符合生态相关强度的夜间人工光会干扰蟋蟀的行为模式，可能导致个体层面运动与鸣唱行为的解耦，以及种群层面活动节律同步性的丧失。