Navigating the night: effects of artificial light on the behaviour of Atlantic puffin fledglings
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Every year in Newfoundland, young Atlantic puffins, Fratercula arctica , departing their nests at night for the first time become stranded in towns near their breeding colonies, a phenomenon thought to be caused by attraction towards artificial light. To test this hypothesis, we conducted three behavioural experiments. First, we illuminated beaches near a breeding colony to determine whether more fledglings would become stranded in illuminated versus dark conditions. Next, we conducted a Y-maze experiment to test stranded fledglings for phototactic behaviour in general and for preferences among high-pressure sodium (HPS), Warm white light-emitting diode (LED), Cool white LED, Blue LED and Orange LED light. Lastly, we quantified activity levels of stranded fledglings in an open field test during exposure to several different light types. We found significantly more fledglings stranded when beaches were illuminated, and fledglings significantly preferred light over darkness in the Y-maze, supporting our hypothesis that Atlantic puffin fledglings become stranded due to light attraction. Fledglings displayed no preferences for certain light types over others in the Y-maze, potentially suggesting that strandings in this species may not be mitigable by changing the streetlight type in stranding-prone towns. Interestingly, fledglings exhibited higher activity levels in darkness and HPS light than in LED light, potentially holding implications for rescue, rehabilitation and husbandry programmes. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the only evidence-based strategy for the reduction of Atlantic puffin strandings is the reduction of coastal artificial lighting; however, further research is needed to determine whether aspects of artificial light besides bulb type may be altered to effectively reduce light attraction in this species. • Atlantic puffin fledglings become stranded in towns near their breeding colonies. • More fledglings became stranded at experimentally lit beaches than at dark ones. • Fledglings preferred light over darkness in a choice experiment. • Light spectrum had no effect on fledgling preferences. • Fledglings were less active under LED light than under darkness or other light types.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".