ArticleEcological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America2020
Artificial light at night, in interaction with spring temperature, modulates timing of reproduction in a passerine bird.
Article in Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 66 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evolution under the city's shadow: reproductive divergence of urban and rural great tits revealed by a common garden experiment.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Impact of light pollution spectra and intensity on the development and mortality of tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) larvae.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Beyond first clutches: Second broods reshape selection on breeding timing in forest and urban great tits.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- The ecological importance of natural dark nights for circadian organization, metabolism and reproduction in birds.BMC ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- Native trees are related to advanced bird breeding phenology and increased reproductive success along an urban gradient.Ecology · 2026Article
- The Effects of Light on Vertebrate Welfare: A Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Continental Patterns of Phenotypic Variation Along Replicated Urban Gradients: A Mega-Analysis.Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Temperature amplifies the effect of anthropogenic light on foraging common pipistrelle bats.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Eye catching light: Anthropogenic light at night and its evolutionary influence on the avian eye.iScience · 2025Article
- Feather corticosterone levels in the southern lapwing revealed no association with the degree of urbanization.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
- Relative importance of intensity and spectrum of artificial light at night in disrupting behavior of a nocturnal rodent.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Threatened chronotopes: can chronobiology help endangered species?Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Review
- Review
- Experimental light at night explains differences in activity onset between urban and forest great tits.Biology letters · 2023Article
- A multidimensional framework to quantify the effects of urbanization on avian breeding fitness.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Ingrained city rhythms: flexible activity timing but more persistent circadian pace in urban birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Dim light at night affects the locomotor activity of nocturnal African pygmy mice (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Disturbances of Hormonal Circadian Rhythms by Light Pollution.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Anthropogenic changes to the nighttime environment.Bioscience · 2023Article
- Urban tree composition is associated with breeding success of a passerine bird, but effects vary within and between years.Oecologia · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ecological impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on phenological events such as reproductive timing is increasingly recognized. In birds, previous experiments under controlled conditions showed that ALAN strongly advances gonadal growth, but effects on egg-laying date are less clear. In particular, effects of ALAN on timing of egg laying are found to be year-dependent, suggesting an interaction with climatic conditions such as spring temperature, which is known have strong effects on the phenology of avian breeding. Thus, we hypothesized that ALAN and temperature interact to regulate timing of reproduction in wild birds. Field studies have suggested that sources of ALAN rich in short wavelengths can lead to stronger advances in egg-laying date. We therefore tested this hypothesis in the Great Tit (Parus major), using a replicated experimental set-up where eight previously unlit forest transects were illuminated with either white, green, or red LED light, or left dark as controls. We measured timing of egg laying for 619 breeding events spread over six consecutive years and obtained temperature data for all sites and years. We detected overall significantly earlier egg-laying dates in the white and green light vs. the dark treatment, and similar trends for red light. However, there was a strong interannual variability in mean egg-laying dates in all treatments, which was explained by spring temperature. We did not detect any fitness consequence of the changed timing of egg laying due to ALAN, which suggests that advancing reproduction in response to ALAN might be adaptive.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.