Hi everyone! This is my first post here. I would like to ask the community’s opinion on the ethics of using a flash or a flashlight when photographing moths and other nocturnal insects.
My process is simple: I don’t use specialized light traps; I just sit by the window at night and notice insects attracted to my indoor lights. To get high-quality, clear, and detailed shots, I often use a flash or a flashlight. It definitely improves the contrast and quality of the photos, but I’m worried if such a bright light could be harmful to the insects.
What are your thoughts on using artificial light for macro photography in these situations? Is it considered ethical, or should I be concerned about their well-being? I’d love to hear your insights and experiences
Artificial light at night definitely has a negative effect on organisms, but I’m unaware of any research specifically on flash and insects. My guess is that this would have a temporary effect (if any). If insects are already being drawn to a location by another light source, the flash (and any temporary negative effects) are probably negligible. In my mind, the benefit of posting the data on iNat would outweigh the potential for a minor negative impact.
That said, as you seem to care about impacts of ALAN, if you do have a lot of light drawing insects in to a location, that is a negative impact for those insect populations. I’d suggest looking into ways to reducing the the amount of ALAN you may be generating (reducing amount of light outside, curtains/other window coverings, changing fixtures to be sure light goes down, etc.).
The single ethics reason that is talked about using artificial lights for photography is “because they are attracted to our artificial light, they cannot do their daily duties of foraging or mating or such that they could have done naturally in that time while increasing predation risk in human environments”
so ardent insect lovers take a balanced approach usually, by limiting such activity to very few hours per day than entire night, different hours in different days, limiting to few days like new moon or low moon visibility days, shooing away predators like geckos and such actively.
The ones that have caused me the most thought is net-casting spiders in the Family Deinopidae. according to the Australian Museum “The Net-casting spiders’ large eyes provide outstanding low-light night vision. Their compound lenses have an F number of 0.58 which means they can concentrate available light more efficiently than a cat (F 0.9) or an owl (F 1.1). The image is focussed onto a large, light-receptive retinal membrane (which is destroyed at dawn and renewed again each night).” https://australian.museum/learn/animals/spiders/rufous-net-casting-spider/
I imagine that is daylight burns away their retina every day then it’s likely that the use of a flash would do so as well. Since they can reconstruct their retina I suppose a photo would ruin their night but create no lasting effects.
It does make me wonder if it has the same effect on some other nocturnal predators
yes but daylight is continuous and broad spectrum, while flash is intermittent and more intense during the nocturnal time where their retina is amplifying such light signals already. It wont cause burn level damage but definitely temporarily saturate the photoreceptors or bleach photopigments depending on species actual vision sensitivity.
a few one off flashes could thus create startling or strong temporary vision disruptions in those net casting spiders (it looks not highly harmful when viewed from their few spider’s predators and if such focused flash photography is controlled to few shots for that one organism and provided one isnt monitoring that single nocturnal organism daily); and also such retinal rebuilding is not a dominant thing across nocturnal life like those netcasting spiders. Most settle for superposition eyes (photons from multiple facets focused onto one photoreceptor as amplification in moths), rhodopsin tuning (protein environment tunes to specific wavelengths that should be absorbed better based on ecological niche of species and time). There is also pigment redistribution which is kind of like aperture control, by moving photoreceptor pigment granules to prevent saturation. A flash or lighttrap will obviously effect all these vision systems even if not to detrimental levels but atleast to the regime of them being not optimal systems and it will definitely have effects on their behaviour in short term. A moth vision system overloaded for hours with high intensity light may not help that moth vision much for minutes even after such light trap is shut off and those precious minutes can be life/death if there are predators around.
so preferably few flashes for one species, and rather focus on different organisms during same night, and overall less duration light traps per day is still ethically sound without foregoing documentation altogether (unless they are field artists or the organism has unique sound signature ;)
not exactly, we have tubelights or bulbs in home (lightning we encounter), now imagine a close flash photography onto our face :) (to me the latter experience is definitely daunting and I want it to be limited); and then there is a point of default state as above discussion, if an organism is nocturnal and resting in dark space at night with amplified vision receptors pathways, even an intermittent flash is more intense for such dark adapted state the retina may and could have been in.
My experience with birds and a few mammals is that most don’t react to flashes, even at very close distance, except if they are already scared or nervous, in which case a slight movement, noise or flash of light is enough to make them disappear!
Insects are probably more disturbed by fixed artificial lights that attracts them, than flash.
That said, for the first time I noticed the other day one insect that flew away after a couple of flashes: I had my cell phone and could come very close take a few picture, but when I came back 5 minutes later with my camera, the flash, and a long lens - so I was 1+ meter away, flash maybe at 1/4th power - it just flew away on the 2nd flash! So here it is, with the phone:
It was first hiding in a crevice in bark and came out to this position when I moved some object, I guess it’s nocturnal…
oops I am embarrassed now. But I still think lightning per se is broad diffused phenomenon over an flash that is directed, relatively close range at that nocturnal animal vision. But again idk if anyone really studied contrastingly how these two lights have effects on their vision.
This was my thoughts exactly. It’s not even the same wavelengths of light, so it’s not as simple of a comparison to make.
Leaving a bright porch light on all night is most likely more of an ethical issue than using the flash. Has anyone ever gone to a big mothing event? Tons of light and flash photography, but the bugs are only interested in the bright sheets they were drawn to in the first place.
It would be interesting to design a study to see what effect flashes have on insects, though.
would be a cool work. but I cant think of clean way to understand its effects unless one captures two groups of same species and subjects them to flash vs no-flash and then see how their vision system gets effected in time by making those groups interact in their daily tasks or even by having to dissect and study their two retinas more closely to find any physiological changes and then decoupling their functional effects. It would atleast be interesting research although very painful effort to researchers if chosing insect model than doing the same study on higher life like this old rabbit study: Long-Term Effects of High Intensity Flashes on the ERG of the Rabbit
JMO but setting up moth lights and leaving them until after the sun comes up likely causes a much greater issue with impacts to the local ecology. I have often wondered if ecolodges that do this to attract birds are inadvertently causing a reduction in population of nocturnal species attracted to lights.
I try to make it a habit to turn my moth lights off no later than 4:00 am and to shake the sheet to ‘release’ the moths that are alight on it. I hope this allows moths to repatriate to their diurnal habitat before they are consumed by predators during the day.
