Fluorescent wildlife & fluorescent objects

In this year’s intense field season, I found something super cool that frog bones and eyes glow under my UV torchlight, and so as many lichens and fungi.

I was excited for this discovery and thought my lab mates Meg and Arjun and I could publish a little natural history note and we would be very famous. My dream quickly went over when I realized biofluorescence in wildlife has been known for years. Multiple comprehensive papers have been published on amphibians and lizards (e.g. Lamb and Davis 2015; Prötzel et al. 2021; Maria et al. 2022). Compared to those beautiful fluorescence colors from blue to yellow in the literature, the trilling chorus frogs, blue-spotted salamanders and leopard frogs I have flashed my torchlight on seem to be quite boring by glowing green.

Scientists know that fluorescence is used by wildlife for foraging and mating. For example, butterflies are attracted to flowers with specific fluorescence pattern under UV. This has made me wonder, are artificial fluorescent objects potentially be a pollution to those wildlife, just like light pollution at night? I don’t seem to find any answer from the internet.