Applied Ecology — Artificial Light at Night (ALAN)

The proliferation of artificial light at night is increasingly recognized as an environmental pollutant that disturbs natural foraging and habitat use patterns, predator-prey dynamics, and ancient circadian rhythms. My current research focuses on how artificial light at night affects invertebrate and fish communities in freshwater systems. Since artificial light at night is collinear with urban development, my current work has focused on urban streams, rivers, reservoirs, where we are disentangling the effects of multiple stressors.

Fig. 1a Downtown Columbus, OH over the Scioto River at night.

Fig. 1b Home Rd. over the Scioto River at night in Delaware, OH

Fig. 2a Significant negative relationship between orthophosphate (mg PO₄-P/L) and α-diversity of fish assemblages measured as Hill numbers.

Fig. 2b Significant positive relationship between mean stream depth and α-diversity of fish assemblages measured as Hill numbers.

Fig. 3 Non-metric multidimensional scaling plots for fish assemblages showing species composition (stress = 0.144) across Lit and Unlit reaches (p = 0.154).