I really don’t think UV is playing much of a role here. You could also sort their chart by power usage, or IR produced. The paper conclusion paragraph even states UV and IR as candidates but the article just says UV.
Um, no. I live on a farm and often have to do chores in the dark with an LED headlight. Sometimes I have to turn it off because I'm dive bombed by so many insects.
Welp, they do for mine. I've had to stop turning on outdoor LEDs because angry bees kept showing up, and there'd be 3-10 dead ones on my doorstep every morning. These are white bulbs. Might be "zombees."
Also, not sure about white bulbs, but those color-configurable spotlights definitely emit UV at least when set to anything near blue/purple. They cause certain things to glow. Probably white is doing it too but it's harder to see.
The streetlights in my neighborhood still have the round photo sensors on top, that have something like a watt of standby current for the sensor itself. I don't think they're trying hard to save powwer.
The ones that have a watt of standby are the really old models (probably not sold for the last 30yrs) where you'd have an LDR controlled relay with no electronics
Anything more modern than that, even if it has a similar case, will use less power
The article bluntly states: "Moonlight contains ultraviolet (UV) and infrared wavelengths because it is merely reflected sunlight. Insects cue on UV, believing it to be the moon. . . . Incandescent lights transmit UV but LEDs do not. Insects are far less attracted to LED."
However, my mind developed a similar conjecture to your's: what if the common frequencies of PWM occur within a kinetic visual blindspot of insect vision, like human saccades [0] in the novel Blindsight [1], so that insects are not aware of the LED at all?
They've had many generations to evolve alongside all human false light sources. Insect generations are usually pretty short. Perhaps they just find it evolutionary useful to cluster around human sources of light. Presence of human food, liklihood of bumping into other insects of the same species, warmth, etc.
If human sources of light were interfering somehow, they've had hundreds or thousands of generations to breed out that proclivity.
Yes, you need some ultraviolet to attract insects. That's why bug-zappers have near UV lamps. They're usually compact fluorescent bulbs. Some ads say 365nm is the right color.
I think it’s to do with the LED flicker. You can sometimes see it in your peripheral vision (ie your light/dark receptors) but your RGB cones aren’t as good at spotting it.
Insects eyes are biologically very different.
With LED lighting, if you have lots of spot lights in the ceiling and and open door, you’ll likely find that the light leaving the house is a bath of reflection from different sources inside the house and that likely cancels out the worst of the flicker.
I wonder how much of it is also the LED flicker. If I was a small bug and moving quickly with a high visual refresh rate, I would probably hate the experience of the LED flicker
I highly recommend the pop science book An Immense World by Ed Yong to disabuse you of this notion. There is a sort of refresh rate (not exactly the same but good metaphor) for everything at every level of living being we study. It gives enough information for you to read the actual studied should you have more questions after reading it.
There are odd visual illusions though, like humans perceive the Wagon-Wheel Effect even though there's no obvious reason it should happen. This is the effect where the speed of a rotating object varies depending on its sync with a discrete exposure period.
You mention it yourself, these illusions only occur with "discrete exposure periods". This is moreso related to video recordings and less about how the eye sees actual physical objects. Such illusions do NOT occur with natural light.
Edit; to be clear there is a version of the wagon wheel effect under natural light, I'm just saying that the main one with discrete exposure periods does not occur irl
I'm confused. I thought seeing/measuring lower frequencies due to a low sampling frequency, where the lower perceived frequency is basically the modulus of the real frequency and the sampling rate, is a well-known phenomenon independent of the actual sensor implementation.
Yeah, i know that's how the physics works, but effectively my computer monitor doesn't flicker for me but a strobe light does. Whatever the proper term for that is what I'm talking aobut
But there is a neurological component in "optical processing" that can be modeled as a discrete rate of update although the underlying physiology is still being investigated.
Try walking outside in a clear night. Look up, notice some stars, or aircraft lights. Now rotate in place, and see how low your vision's FPS is in the dark: the rotation will be visibility jumpy.
An insect, with its much simpler visual processing, and facing a bright light, will likely achieve a much higher FPS, sufficient for the sub-kilohertz flicker to be very visible.
For a game i tried to model the behavior of our eyes in the dark and read up on a lot of that stuff. Not once was there a suggestion of jumpy vision. And that is also not my experience. In low light things begin to smudge, lots of ghosting the further in the periphery of your view they move in.
I wonder what percentage is pesticides vs development? I currently live in an area(US) where a drive to the nearest city of size absolutely coats my car in bugs. US, mostly farmland(soybeans/corn). I wasn't here 30 years ago so can't say there's as many as then, likely not. But if it were only pesticides I'd expect the rural areas to have less bugs than the more developed areas...
As someone who has made many interstate trips through Australia's farmland, I can say that over the decades there's definitely been a drop in windshield splatter. It's unsurprising that pesticide deployed at scale reduces bug populations. Even herbicides which aren't intended as insecticides have limited product advantage to being bug-safe (apart from pollinated crops... and even then). Some aren't even human-safe. An extreme example is paraquat, that while being a herbicide, is irreversibly deadly to humans^ when consumed even in tiny amounts.
wow this would be a neat twist if true - we all defaulted to the negative explanation of having killed them all where a much more positive explanation might be that we're no longer luring them to their deaths at the leading edge of automobiles?
I guess it is most likely some combination of the above, but if there's any evidence it would be a neat reframing
I wonder if it’s only the UV that makes a difference. I have some Yuji SunWave bulbs (and the NIR versions). Would be interesting to test those at night against normal LED bulbs and incandescent.
IIR, hydrogen flames can emit enough of their energy in the UV for that to be a serious issue - both direct human exposure, and degradation of exposed surfaces and equipment.
Also, not sure about white bulbs, but those color-configurable spotlights definitely emit UV at least when set to anything near blue/purple. They cause certain things to glow. Probably white is doing it too but it's harder to see.
The thing that insects can see and we don't is the rapid flashing of a PWM power controller.
I wonder if these streetlights have power saving fade-ins as the nightfall approaches instead of clicking on at sunset.
Like - https://doi.org/10.1109/CSNT51715.2021.9509652
Anything more modern than that, even if it has a similar case, will use less power
However, my mind developed a similar conjecture to your's: what if the common frequencies of PWM occur within a kinetic visual blindspot of insect vision, like human saccades [0] in the novel Blindsight [1], so that insects are not aware of the LED at all?
0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10991/
1. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#:~:text=%22There...
They've had many generations to evolve alongside all human false light sources. Insect generations are usually pretty short. Perhaps they just find it evolutionary useful to cluster around human sources of light. Presence of human food, liklihood of bumping into other insects of the same species, warmth, etc.
If human sources of light were interfering somehow, they've had hundreds or thousands of generations to breed out that proclivity.
Insects eyes are biologically very different.
With LED lighting, if you have lots of spot lights in the ceiling and and open door, you’ll likely find that the light leaving the house is a bath of reflection from different sources inside the house and that likely cancels out the worst of the flicker.
They didn't say no bug ever goes to any led light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon-wheel_effect
https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/subjective-strobosco...
Edit; to be clear there is a version of the wagon wheel effect under natural light, I'm just saying that the main one with discrete exposure periods does not occur irl
Try walking outside in a clear night. Look up, notice some stars, or aircraft lights. Now rotate in place, and see how low your vision's FPS is in the dark: the rotation will be visibility jumpy.
An insect, with its much simpler visual processing, and facing a bright light, will likely achieve a much higher FPS, sufficient for the sub-kilohertz flicker to be very visible.
^ Obligatory Chubbyemu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VtUGoGZtI8
I guess it is most likely some combination of the above, but if there's any evidence it would be a neat reframing
We use UV/IR combo Flame detectors at work for this purpose.