![]() Yet, colonizing this challenging diel niche comes with great benefits in avoiding both competitors and predators ( Wcislo et al., 2004), thus making evolutionary adaptations to the low light conditions worthwhile. This critically limits the information available to the sense of vision, which is fundamental to locomotion control, orientation and navigation, and also heavily relied upon for foraging, predator avoidance, mate detection and communication. These species face a dramatic change in their sensory environment, as the available light varies more than one million-fold between day and night ( Johnsen et al., 2006). Many of the world’s animals, from tiny insects to large mammals, are active during the night. With this analysis method, we aim to provide context for the interpretation of behavioral findings, and to allow researchers to generate specific hypotheses for the behavior of nocturnal animals in observed light-polluted scenes. By accounting for light-adaptation in our analysis, we are able to make more realistic predictions of the information animals can extract from nocturnal visual scenes under different levels of light pollution. This analysis relies on just a limited number of visual system parameters known for each species. This approach incorporates the sensitivity and acuity limits of individual species, arriving at predictions of photon catch relative to noise thresholds, contrast distributions, and the orientation cues nocturnal species can extract from visual scenes. ![]() ![]() To understand how these changes affect nocturnal behavior, we here propose an animal-centered analysis method based on environmental imaging. ![]() However, over the past century electric lighting has introduced direct and indirect light pollution into the full range of terrestrial habitats, changing nocturnal animals’ visual worlds dramatically. A large proportion of animal species enjoy the benefits of being active at night, and have evolved the corresponding optical and neural adaptations to cope with the challenges of low light intensities. ![]()
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