Photovoltaic panels are the most rapidly growing source of sustainable energy, but are also sources of polarized light pollution that can mislead aquatic insects into thinking they represent natural waterbodies. Aquatic insects are commonly attracted away from natural water bodies to lay their eggs upon solar panels where they fail to hatch, a phenomenon called an evolutionary trap. Previous work demonstrates that the addition of white, non-polarizing gridding with 2–20 mm line width to solar panels can effectively ‘disarm’ this type of evolutionary trap, rendering it less attractive to three families of aquatic insects. However, the geographic and taxonomic breadth of the efficacy may be limited, and the economic cost associated with reducing the black solar-active area of solar panels has not yet been quantified. We designed a field experiment to test whether line width or density is more important in reducing the maladaptive attraction of aquatic insects to simulated solar panels, and expanded the geographic and taxonomic breadth of testing this approach to disarming evolutionary traps. We found that line width could be manipulated to strongly reduce attraction by all taxa. The effective line width was between 1 and 5 mm, indicating that solar panel-induced evolutionary traps can be disarmed with a more modest reduction in solar-active area than was previously assumed. Interruption of attraction through the addition of non-polarizing surface patterns appears to be a fundamental aspect of aquatic insect interpretation of environmental polarized light signals that can be used to disguise evolutionary traps.

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如何掩饰太阳能电池板造成的进化陷阱

光伏电池板是增长最快的可持续能源来源，但也是偏振光污染的来源，会误导水生昆虫认为它们代表自然水体。水生昆虫通常被吸引远离天然水体，将卵产在无法孵化的太阳能电池板上，这种现象称为进化陷阱。先前的工作表明，在太阳能电池板上添加线宽为 2-20 毫米的白色非偏振网格可以有效地“解除”这种类型的进化陷阱，使其对三个水生昆虫科的吸引力降低。然而，功效的地理和分类广度可能是有限的，与减少太阳能电池板的黑色太阳能活动面积相关的经济成本尚未量化。我们设计了一个现场实验来测试线宽或密度在减少水生昆虫对模拟太阳能电池板的适应不良吸引力方面是否更重要，并扩大了测试这种方法以解除进化陷阱的地理和分类学广度。我们发现可以操纵线宽以强烈降低所有分类群的吸引力。有效线宽在 1 到 5 毫米之间，表明太阳能电池板引起的进化陷阱可以通过比以前假设的更适度的太阳能活动面积减少来解除。通过添加非偏振表面图案来中断吸引力似乎是水生昆虫解释环境偏振光信号的一个基本方面，可用于伪装进化陷阱。