ArticleNature communications2024
Why flying insects gather at artificial light.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 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
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Citizen science reveals temporally structured insect attraction and mitigation efficacy under artificial light at night.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Wavelength-Specific Transcriptomic Responses ofInsects · 2026Article
- Local Infrastructure Induces Edge Effect in Nocturnal Insects-A Case Study in the Donau-Auen National Park (Austria).Insects · 2026Article
- Flight in the dark: different responses to darkness in flying insects.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- An autonomous intelligent mosquito sentinel for field-deployed surveillance.Communications engineering · 2026Article
- A Novel Light-Induced Collective Circular Movement inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Mitigating light pollution impacts on arthropods based on light-emitting diode properties.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Larval zebrafish maintain elevation with multisensory control of posture and locomotion.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Larval zebrafish maintain elevation with multisensory control of posture and locomotion.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Bats flying through a Y-maze are visually attracted to wind turbine surfaces.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Neuromorphic encoding strategies for a noisy magnetic sense.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Experimental study on the impact of continuous and dynamic artificial light at night on moths originating from different skyglow conditions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Behavioral and transcriptomic responses of wild least horseshoe bats to artificial light.iScience · 2025Article
- Using mathematical modelling to highlight challenges in understanding trap counts obtained by a baited trap.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Programmable LED Array for Evaluating Artificial Light Sources to Improve Insect Trapping.Insects · 2025Article
- Predicting landscape disturbance using adult Trichoptera: one (caddis) metric to rule them all?ZooKeys · 2025Article
- Pulsed artificial light at night alters moth flight behaviour.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Harmonic radar suggests greater impact of light pollution for nocturnal insects.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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.
Funding
Abstract
Explanations of why nocturnal insects fly erratically around fires and lamps have included theories of "lunar navigation" and "escape to the light". However, without three-dimensional flight data to test them rigorously, the cause for this odd behaviour has remained unsolved. We employed high-resolution motion capture in the laboratory and stereo-videography in the field to reconstruct the 3D kinematics of insect flights around artificial lights. Contrary to the expectation of attraction, insects do not steer directly toward the light. Instead, insects turn their dorsum toward the light, generating flight bouts perpendicular to the source. Under natural sky light, tilting the dorsum towards the brightest visual hemisphere helps maintain proper flight attitude and control. Near artificial sources, however, this highly conserved dorsal-light-response can produce continuous steering around the light and trap an insect. Our guidance model demonstrates that this dorsal tilting is sufficient to create the seemingly erratic flight paths of insects near lights and is the most plausible model for why flying insects gather at artificial lights.
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.