Light Pollution and PlantsHumans have radically disrupted
the cyclic or the rhythmic pattern
of the behavior of animals and the
plants which are the product of
the interaction with their natural
environment for billions of years on
earth. Plants and animals depend on
Earth’s daily cycle of light and dark
rhythm to govern life-sustaining
behaviors such as reproduction,
nourishment, sleep and protection
from predators. Scientific evidences
suggest that artificial light at night
has negative and deadly effects
on many creatures including
amphibians, birds, mammals, insects
and plants. For the normal growth
and development, trees depend on
light’s quality (wavelength or color),
its intensity (brightness), and theduration of its 24 hour light-dark
period (photoperiod) irrespective of
whether the light coming from Sun
or artificial sources. Increased injury
to woody plants has been reported
since the widespread introduction of
high pressure sodium lamp type of
artificial lighting. Lights should be
turned off or dimmed during off-peak
hours to avoid continuous lighting
of trees, which has the greatest
potential for upsetting normal growth
patterns. Increased use of artificial
lights interfere with the navigational
ability of many pollinating agents
specially insects. Moths, important
pollinators of night blooming flowers,
get disoriented due to light resulting
in non-pollination of key stone
plant species. Cactus (Selenicereus
grandiflorus) – Moonlight cactus,
opens at night only and in excessivelight, prevents pollination.Light Pollution and PhenologyThe seasonality of the life histories
of plants is closely related with the
rhythmicity of the natural abiotic
conditions such as duration of
light, temperature and humidity,
etc. When such conditions of the
environment are changed it surely
results in the anomalies of the life
cycles and history traits of plants. The
artificial night lighting may modify
the phenology of birds (Helm B et al,
2013). Some birds breed earlier than
the usual time if exposed to artificial
light. For example, urban common
blackbirds Turdus merula breed up
to one month earlier, and moult
three weeks earlier compared with
rural conspecifics, an effect causedNight life at Tholpetty, Kalidas Pavithran, CC-BY-2.046 neScholar^0 vol 4^0 issue 4