When juveniles of burrow-nesting seabirds leave their nests to start their first migration they are often curtailed from reaching the sea, grounded across urban areas after encountering light pollution. We set out to test the hypothesis that exposure to light during growth, or lack thereof, could be a main driving factor leading to the higher vulnerability observed in seabird juveniles, and why fallout is a predominantly burrow-nesting species event. We recorded chicks behavioural responses towards two contrastingly artificial lights, red and blue, and exposed each chick five times, from 3 weeks old to near fledging. We then analysed the effect of the chicks’ age (i.e., younger chicks would have worse visual ability than older chicks, and show less behavioural responses), and amount of exposure to artificial light during growth (i.e., chicks exposed to light more times would have their visual systems more trained, consequently display more behavioural responses). Our results showed that repetitive exposure to the artificial light stimuli increased the number of responses, but chick’s age did not have any effect on the responses. As burrow-nesters chicks will mostly grow in dark environments, which lack sufficient light stimuli to train their visual systems, our findings provide evidence of the untrained vision at fledging, and its contribution to the vulnerability towards light pollution. The effects that persistent light pollution close to these birds breeding colonies may have on their vulnerability should now be investigated.
More info at:
Atchoi E, et al. 2023. Ontogenetic exposure to light influences seabird vulnerability to light pollution. Journal of Exprimental Biology
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