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.