Mariana Mayer Pinto1
1University of New South Wales, Australia
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is expected to profoundly impact most ecosystems on the planet by disrupting a fundamental driver of biological, ecological and evolutionary processes: natural light cycles. More than 20% of the world’s coastlines are experiencing high levels of ALAN, with consequences for the physiology, behaviour and/or survival of organisms. Even at 10 m depth, 1.6 million km2 of the coastlines across the globe are exposed to biologically important ALAN from coastal urban centres. Yet, we have limited knowledge on the effects of light pollution on the marine environment, including impacts on key habitat-forming organisms. In this talk, I’ll present results from a series of manipulative experiments done in the field and in the lab, showing clear direct and/or indirect effects of ALAN – either by itself or in combination with warming – on habitat-forming seaweeds. Underwater forests often comprise multiple habitat-forming seaweed species, including the kelp Ecklonia radiata and the fucoid Sargassum spp. These species support high biodiversity, including endemic and commercially significant species and contributes $10 billion per year to fisheries, tourism and recreation industries. Impacts of light pollution on these species, through both direct and indirect effects, either in isolation or in combination with other stressors, are therefore expected to have profound impacts on urbanised temperate reef systems, specially. Understanding ALAN impacts can help us devise efficient conservation and management strategies to improve quality of habitat for key species and habitats in and around cities.
Biography
Mariana Mayer Pinto is a Scientia Associate Professor at the School of BEES at UNSW. She is the co-founder of the Living Seawalls, which aims to mitigate biodiversity loss in our oceans due to marine construction. Her research focuses on how human activities, such as pollution and urbanisation, affect the marine environment with the ultimate goal of developing evidence-based solutions for not only mitigating their impacts, but also restoring and rehabilitating marine ecosystems.