Artificial nightlight is increasingly recognized as an important environmental disturbance that influences the habitats and fitness of numerous species. However, its effects on wide‐ranging vertebrates and their interactions remain unclear. Light pollution has the potential to amplify land‐use change, and as such, answering the question of how this sensory stimulant affects behavior and habitat use of species valued for their ecological roles and economic impacts is critical for conservation and land‐use planning. Here, we combined satellite‐derived estimates of light pollution, with GPS‐data from cougars Puma concolor (n = 56), mule deer Odocoileus hemionus (n = 263) and locations of cougar‐killed deer (n = 1562 carcasses), to assess the effects of light exposure on mammal behavior and predator–prey relationships across wildland–urban gradients in the southwestern United States. Our results indicate that deer used the anthropogenic environments to access forage and were more active at night than their wildland conspecifics. Despite higher nightlight levels, cougars killed deer at the wildland–urban interface, but hunted them in the relatively darkest locations. Light had the greatest effect of all covariates on where cougars killed deer at the wildland–urban interface. Both species exhibited functional responses to light pollution at fine scales; individual cougars and deer with less light exposure increasingly avoided illuminated areas when exposed to greater radiance, whereas deer living in the wildland–urban interface selected elevated light levels. We conclude that integrating estimates of light pollution into ecological studies provides crucial insights into how the dynamic human footprint can alter animal behavior and ecosystem function across spatial scales.

中文翻译：

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人工夜灯改变了尖牙食肉动物的食肉动物-猎物动力学

人工夜灯越来越被认为是一种重要的环境扰动，影响许多物种的栖息地和适应性。但是，其对广泛脊椎动物及其相互作用的影响尚不清楚。光污染具有扩大土地利用变化的潜力，因此，回答这种感官刺激物如何影响被重视其生态作用和经济影响的物种的行为和栖息地使用的问题对于保护和土地利用规划至关重要。在这里，我们将卫星衍生的光污染估算值与美洲狮美洲狮（n = 56），m鹿Odocoileus hemionus的GPS数据结合在一起（n = 263）和美洲狮杀死的鹿的位置（n = 1562尸体），以评估光照对美国西南部野生动物-城市梯度中哺乳动物行为和捕食者与猎物关系的影响。我们的结果表明，鹿使用人为环境获取草料，并且在夜间比野外物种更为活跃。尽管夜色更高，美洲狮还是在野外与城市的交界处杀死了鹿，但在相对最黑暗的地方猎杀了它们。在所有协变量中，光对美洲狮在野外与城市之间的接触处杀死鹿的影响最大。两种物种都对光污染产生了细微的功能响应。当暴露于更大的辐射度时，单独的美洲狮和鹿暴露于较少的光照下，逐渐避免了被照明的区域，而生活在野外与城市交界处的鹿则选择了较高的光照水平。我们得出的结论是，将光污染的估算值纳入生态学研究可提供有关动态人类足迹如何在整个空间尺度上改变动物行为和生态系统功能的重要见解。