In the Eye of the Beholder: Measuring and Standardising Light for Laboratory Mammals

How to cite: Lucas, R.J.; Allan, A.; Brainard, G.; Brown, T.; Dauchy, R.T.; Didikoglu, A.; Do, M.T.H.; Gaskill, B.N.; Hattar, S.; Hawkins, P.; Hut, R.A.; McDowell, R.; Nelson, R.J.; Prins, J.; Schmidt, T.M.; Takahashi, J.; Verma, V.; Vöikar, V.; Wells, S.; Peirson, S.N. In the Eye of the Beholder: Measuring and Standardising Light for Laboratory Mammals. Preprints 2023, 2023091766. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.1766.v1 Lucas, R.J.; Allan, A.; Brainard, G.; Brown, T.; Dauchy, R.T.; Didikoglu, A.; Do, M.T.H.; Gaskill, B.N.; Hattar, S.; Hawkins, P.; Hut, R.A.; McDowell, R.; Nelson, R.J.; Prins, J.; Schmidt, T.M.; Takahashi, J.; Verma, V.; Vöikar, V.; Wells, S.; Peirson, S.N. In the Eye of the Beholder: Measuring and Standardising Light for Laboratory Mammals. Preprints 2023, 2023091766. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.1766.v1

Cite

Export citation file: Bib TeX | RIS

MDPI and ACS Style

Lucas, R.J.; Allan, A.; Brainard, G.; Brown, T.; Dauchy, R.T.; Didikoglu, A.; Do, M.T.H.; Gaskill, B.N.; Hattar, S.; Hawkins, P.; Hut, R.A.; McDowell, R.; Nelson, R.J.; Prins, J.; Schmidt, T.M.; Takahashi, J.; Verma, V.; Vöikar, V.; Wells, S.; Peirson, S.N. In the Eye of the Beholder: Measuring and Standardising Light for Laboratory Mammals. Preprints 2023, 2023091766. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.1766.v1

APA Style

Lucas, R.J., Allan, A., Brainard, G., Brown, T., Dauchy, R.T., Didikoglu, A., Do, M.T.H., Gaskill, B.N., Hattar, S., Hawkins, P., Hut, R.A., McDowell, R., Nelson, R.J., Prins, J., Schmidt, T.M., Takahashi, J., Verma, V., Vöikar, V., Wells, S., & Peirson, S.N. (2023). In the Eye of the Beholder: Measuring and Standardising Light for Laboratory Mammals. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.1766.v1

Chicago/Turabian Style

Lucas, R.J., Sara Wells and Stuart N. Peirson. 2023 "In the Eye of the Beholder: Measuring and Standardising Light for Laboratory Mammals" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202309.1766.v1

Abstract

Light enables vision and exerts widespread effects on physiology and behaviour, including regulating circadian rhythms, sleep, hormone synthesis, affective state, and cognitive processes. Appropriate lighting in animal facilities may support welfare and ensure that animals enter experiments in a controlled physiological and behavioural state. Proper consideration of light during experimentation - both when it is explicitly employed as an independent variable and as a general feature of the environment - has the potential to provide more informative experimental designs and more reliable outcomes, contributing to Reduction and Refinement, helping to ensure more ethical animal use, and improving data quality. As such, it is unfortunate that ambient light for animals is typically quantified in units (lux) designed for human observers. We report the consensus views of an expert working group, with expertise spanning mammalian photobiology, neurobiology and animal husbandry and welfare, convened in February 2023 to agree upon metrics for light appropriate for non-human mammals and their application to improve animal welfare and the quality of animal research. We conclude that species-specific versions of the recently standardised a-opic metrology represent the best available approach to quantifying light. We provide methods for measuring these quantities; practical guidance for their implementation in husbandry and experimentation; and quantitative guidance on appropriate light exposure for laboratory mammals.

Keywords

animal welfare; photoreceptor; light; circadian; laboratory animal

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Animal Science, Veterinary Science and Zoology

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Download PDF Download Supplementary

Comments (0)

Not displayed online.

Importance: How significant is the paper to the field?

Outstanding/highlight paper

Significant contribution

Incremental contribution

No contribution

I am not qualified to judge

Soundness of evidence/arguments presented:

Conclusions well supported

Most conclusions supported (minor revision needed)

Incomplete evidence (major revision needed)

Hypothesis, unsupported conclusions, or proof-of-principle

I am not qualified to judge

Please leave your comment to this article below.

Mathematical equations can be typed in either LaTeX formats \\[ ... \\] or $$ ... $$, or MathML format <math> ... </math>. Try the LaTeX or MathML example.

Type equation:

Preview:

Copy equation into message below

Close menu

Please click a symbol to insert it into the message box below:

Please enter the link here:

Please enter a valid URL

Optionally, you can enter text that should appear as linked text:

Copy link into message below

Close menu

Please enter or paste the URL to the image here (please only use links to jpg/jpeg, png and gif images):

Please enter a valid URL

Copy image into message below

Close menu

Type author name or keywords to filter the list of references in this group (you can add a new citation under Bibliography):

No existing citations in Discussion Group

Wikify editor is a simple editor for wiki-style mark-up. It was written by MDPI for Sciforum in 2014. The rendering of the mark-up is based on Wiky.php with some tweaks. Rendering of mathematical equations is done with MathJax. Please send us a message for support or for reporting bugs.

Close menu

Please declare any conflicts of interest you may have with this paper, financial or otherwise.

I do not have a conflict of interest

I would like to declare a conflict of interest

Display my name on the website Send my name and email address to the authors

Captcha

Renew

I accept the following conditions:

Comments must follow the standards of professional discourse and should focus on the scientific content of the article. Insulting or offensive language, personal attacks and off-topic remarks will not be permitted. Comments must be written in English. Preprints reserves the right to remove comments without notice. Readers who post comments are obliged to declare any competing interests, financial or otherwise.

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)

* All users must log in before leaving a comment

what’s this?

Add a record of this review to Publons to track and showcase your reviewing expertise across the world’s journals.

Downloads 0

Comments 0

Metrics 0

Get PDF Supplementary Files Cite Share 0

Bookmark BibSonomy Mendeley Reddit Delicious

Alerts

Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.

Preprints.org is a free preprint server subsidized by MDPI in Basel, Switzerland.

MDPI Initiatives

SciProfiles
Sciforum
Encyclopedia
MDPI Books
Scilit
Proceedings
JAMS

Important links

How it Works
Advisory Board
FAQ
Friendly Journals
Instructions for Authors
About
Statistics

Choose the area that interest you and we will send you notifications of new preprints at your preferred frequency.

Disclaimer

We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.

RSS feed for

Preprints: The Multidisciplinary Preprint Platform

Paste the URL in your RSS reader:

https://www.preprints.org/rss

If you want to subscribe our website in subject-wide, you could find the URL by choosing in the following:

https://www.preprints.org/rss

Please note that by using ScienceDirect RSS feeds, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.