Abstract
Artificial light at night is constantly minimizing the span of dark nights from the natural light-dark cycle of earth. Over the past century, the “lightscape” of earth has completely changed owing to technological advancements which subsequently changed the lifestyle of human as well as the nearby animal species. This motivated the present study, wherein we investigated the impact of light at night (LAN) on behavior and physiology of a diurnal passerine finch, baya weaver (Ploceus philippinus). A group of bird (N=10) exposed to 12L:12D photoperiod was initially subjected to dark nights (0 lux) for a period of 1.5 weeks followed by 5 lux, night light for a span of 4 weeks. The first week in LAN served as acute treatment with respect to the fourth week (chronic). The results reveal significant increase in nighttime activity and sleep loss with respect to acute LAN, while significant inclusion of drowsiness behavior during the day in response to chronic LAN. Besides these behavioral alterations, changes in physiological parameters such as reduction in body mass, loss of gradient between pre- and post- prandial blood glucose levels, and elevation in plasma corticosterone levels were more prominent during acute exposure of LAN. Plasma metabolites such as triglycerides, total protein, serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase (SGOT), and creatinine concentrations also hiked in response to acute LAN treatment. Thus, acute exposure of LAN seems to serve as a novel environment for the bird leading to more pronounced impacts on behavioral and physiological observations during the experiment. In chronic exposure, the birds sort of adapted themselves to the prevailing circumstances as evident by decreased nighttime activity, rebound of sleep and corticosterone levels, etc. Thus, the study clearly demonstrates the differential impact of acute and chronic exposure of LAN on behavior and physiology of birds.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed in the present study can be obtained from the corresponding author on request.
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Funding
The financial support by DBT (Department of Biotechnology) Research Project (BT/PR4984/MED/30/752/2012) to SR and UGC-BSR (Fellowship ID 25-1/2014-2015(BSR)/7-109/2007(BSR) to AY, Department of Zoology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow, is highly acknowledged.
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Conceptualization and study design: AY, SR, and SM; study conducted by AY, RK, JT, VV; statistical analyses: AY; result interpretation: AY and SR; manuscript writing: AY and SR. All authors contributed critically to the draft and gave final approval for publication.
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The experiments were performed as per approval of Institutional Animal Ethics Committee of University of Lucknow, Lucknow India. Protocol number: LU/ZOOL/IAEC/08/17/07 (ii).
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Supplementary Figure 1
: Rhythmic profile of different sleep behaviors under LAN. Mean ±SEM values of different sleep behaviors of baya weaver bird during different times of day (ZT- 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24) and in different treatment phases of experiment. (PPTX 1808 kb)
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Yadav, A., Kumar, R., Tiwari, J. et al. Effect of artificial light at night on sleep and metabolism in weaver birds. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 80422–80435 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20875-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20875-x