Restructuring the ecological and evolutionary night
Van Leeuwenhoek Lecture on BioScience.
Kevin Gaston is biologist, at present he is director of the Environment and Sustainability Institute and Professor of Biodiversity & Conservation, University of Exeter, Department of Biosciences). His fields of scholarship are: ecosystem goods and services, environmental management, conservation biology, urban ecology). He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher and received many Honours and Awards.
He leads basic, strategic and applied research in ecology, ecosystem goods and services, land use strategies and urban ecology.
Humans have dramatically transformed the nighttime light environment. The introduction of artificial lightning, and particularly electric lightning, has disruptd natural cycles of light and darkness that had previously been rather consistent over long periods of geological and evolutionary time. The breadth of ecological and evolutionary implications of this disruption, which has several distinct components, is only now being understood. This talk will explore the state of current knowledge, where some of the gaps lie, and what can be done to balance human demands for nighttime lighting and minimizing environmental impacts.
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