Polarized light pollution

Jean-Baptiste Biot and his successors have shown that solutions of organic products, such as fructose or sucrose, can polarize light.

However, only in recent decades has it been realised that the polarized light may play an important role in ecosystems, especially in the insect world.

Gábor Horváth and his team have proposed [1] that this new term needs to be better described and understood in order to better address the specific ecological consequences (direct or delayed in space and time) of light that was polarized (at source or by interacting with objects made or modified by humans).

A representative example is the ecological trap caused by asphalt surfaces polarizing light in a similar way as ponds do.

[2] Many insects have aquatic larval stage, and they largely depend on visual cues such as the light reflection of ponds or rivers to find egg-laying places.