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Journal Article

Artificial light at night decreases plant diversity and performance in experimental grassland communities

Authors

Bucher,  Solveig Franziska
External Organizations;

Uhde,  Lia
External Organizations;

Weigelt,  Alexandra
External Organizations;

Cesarz,  Simone
External Organizations;

Eisenhauer,  Nico
External Organizations;

Gebler,  Alban
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/kyba

Kyba,  C.
1.4 Remote Sensing, 1.0 Geodesy, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

Römermann,  Christine
External Organizations;

Shatwell,  Tom
External Organizations;

Hines,  Jes
External Organizations;

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Fulltext (public)

5024639.pdf
(Publisher version), 834KB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Bucher, S. F., Uhde, L., Weigelt, A., Cesarz, S., Eisenhauer, N., Gebler, A., Kyba, C., Römermann, C., Shatwell, T., Hines, J. (2023): Artificial light at night decreases plant diversity and performance in experimental grassland communities. - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences, 378, 1892.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0358


Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5024639
Abstract
Artificial light at night (ALAN) affects many areas of the world and is increasing globally. To date, there has been limited and inconsistent evidence regarding the consequences of ALAN for plant communities, as well as for the fitness of their constituent species. ALAN could be beneficial for plants as they need light as energy source, but they also need darkness for regeneration and growth. We created model communities composed of 16 plant species sown, exposed to a gradient of ALAN ranging from ‘moonlight only’ to conditions like situations typically found directly underneath a streetlamp. We measured plant community composition and its production (biomass), as well as functional traits of three plant species from different functional groups (grasses, herbs, legumes) in two separate harvests. We found that biomass was reduced by 33% in the highest ALAN treatment compared to the control, Shannon diversity decreased by 43% and evenness by 34% in the first harvest. Some species failed to establish in the second harvest. Specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content and leaf hairiness responded to ALAN. These responses suggest that plant communities will be sensitive to increasing ALAN, and they flag a need for plant conservation activities that consider impending ALAN scenarios.