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 two 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 traps）指环境快速变化时，动物反而偏好劣质栖息地的现象。此类陷阱会提升物种灭绝风险，但目前学界对演化形成的行为算法如何与日益新颖的生态系统交互以触发生态陷阱的认知仍十分有限。偏振光（polarized light）与非偏振光（unpolarized light）均为愈发普遍的光污染形式，已知二者会分别通过异常触发先天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行性野外实验，以探究多样的夜行性昆虫类群在信号处于进化层面的全新邻近环境中，如何利用并整合这些光信号，并以此检验假说：原本演化用于指引导航行为的信号，在栖息地选择的场景下，可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，非偏振光会构建出吸引力更强的生态陷阱，即便是那些仅以偏振光作为唯一栖息地选择信号的水生昆虫类群亦是如此。我们发现，在水生昆虫类群中，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。尽管有一个昆虫科类群展现出了在各自行为场景（导航、栖息地选择）中分化出对两种光信号响应的证据，但本研究结果表明，源自不同行为场景的信号处于全新邻近环境时，可在目标行为场景中增强生态陷阱的吸引力。