Artificial Light and Ecological Disruption
Read the passage and answer the questions by choosing the best option.
Artificial Light and Ecological Disruption
For most of evolutionary history, the division between day and night was absolute. Organisms calibrated their behaviour — feeding, migrating, reproducing — to a light cycle that varied with latitude and season but was otherwise predictable. The introduction of artificial light has disrupted this ancient rhythm on a scale that ecologists are only beginning to measure. Coastal installations, for example, disorient sea turtle hatchlings that navigate toward the ocean by the brightness of the horizon; urban skyglow suppresses melatonin production in songbirds, advancing their dawn chorus and shortening their rest; and streetlights create 'ecological traps' for insects, drawing billions into fatal orbits each night. The cumulative effect is not merely a collection of individual harms but a systemic alteration of the nocturnal environment — what the biologist Johan Eklöf has called 'the erasure of night'. Solutions exist: shielded fixtures, amber-spectrum LEDs, and curfew lighting have all shown measurable benefits in pilot studies. The obstacle is not technology but awareness: light pollution remains, for most people, an invisible problem, precisely because its medium is visibility itself.
1. The passage argues that artificial light is ecologically harmful because it:
2. The phrase 'ecological traps' refers to:
3. According to the passage, the main barrier to addressing light pollution is:
4. Johan Eklöf's phrase 'the erasure of night' suggests that: