Artificial light at night is often discussed as though nocturnal insects encounter a lamp, become attracted, and are removed from dark habitat. That sequence captures one pathway but obscures responses operating at different spatial and temporal scales. This article develops a proposed lightscape-effect classification separating physical exposure, immediate behavior, and downstream ecological redistribution. Attraction is treated alongside orientation failure, avoidance, temporal activity displacement, and effects beyond the illuminated footprint. Evidence indicates that lamp aggregation can arise from disrupted flight-control orientation, some taxa avoid illumination, and diffuse skyglow can shift activity without a focal source. Predator, resource, and network consequences therefore cannot be inferred directly from lamp captures or local abundance. Conservation interpretation should move from lamp-centred counts toward spatially explicit lightscapes in which source properties, behavioral state, temporal redistribution, taxonomic context, and scale-transfer uncertainty are evaluated separately. The framework is an organizing hypothesis, not a validated predictive model.
