Artificial lights can be deadly to the insects that fly around them, so why do these critters do it?
The classic summer cookout comes with chips, drinks and then, after the sun goes down, swarms of insects flitting around porch lights. But flying around artificial lights can have deadly consequences for critters such as moths, gnats and mosquitos; they can get trapped under lampshades and exposed to predators such as beetles, spiders, bats and birds.
In 1965, one researcher hypothesized that lights might somehow mimic mating pheromones."That was a wild theory!" said Yash Sondhi, a researcher at the University of Florida who studies moths and sensory systems."But at that point, all the theories had no evidence," he told Live Science. On one level, it appears that insects fly to artificial lights because older evolutionary responses are being hijacked.
Sondhi and colleagues' experiment may explain why insects stay near lights once they get there but not how some insects find lights over long distances or why some get stuck and others don't.
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