Summary 1.Increasing urbanization and recreational activities around and within biodiversity hotspots require an understanding of how to reduce the impacts of human disturbance on more than a single species; however, we lack a general framework to study multiple species. One approach is to expand on knowledge about the theory of anti-predator behaviour to understand and predict how different species might respond to humans. 2. We reviewed the literature and found that only 21% of studies that used a behavioural approach to study human disturbance focused on multiple species. These studies identified a number of potential predictive variables. 3.We developed a simulation model that investigates interspecific variation in different parameters of disturbance with variation in human visitation. We found that fitness-related responses, such as the quantity of food consumed by a species, are relatively sensitive to the distance at which animals detect humans, the frequency of disturbance by humans and the interaction of these factors, but are less sensitive to other characteristics. 4. We examined avian alert distance (the distance animals first orientated to an approaching threat, a proxy for detection distance) across 150 species, controlling for phylogenetic effects. We found that larger species had greater alert distances than smaller species, which could increase local spatial and temporal limitations on suitable habitat with increasing human visitation. 5. Synthesis and applications . Our results suggest that body size could be a potential predictor of responses to human disturbance across species, and could be used by managers to make conservation decisions regarding levels of human visitation to a protected site. We suggest that three things are essential to develop predictive models of how different species will respond to human disturbance. First, multiple indicators of disturbance should be studied to select those with lower intraspecific variation for a given study system. Secondly, the species-specific nature of responses should be identified. Thirdly, life history, natural history and other correlates with these species-specific responses must be assessed.

Global expansion of human activities is associated with the introduction of novel stimuli, such as anthropogenic noise, artificial lights, and chemical agents. Progress in documenting the ecological effects of sensory pollutants is weakened by sparse knowledge of the mechanisms underlying these effects. This severely limits our capacity to devise mitigation measures. Here, we integrate knowledge of animal sensory ecology, physiology, and life history to articulate three perceptual mechanismsmasking, distracting, and misleadingthat clearly explain how and why anthropogenic sensory pollutants impact organisms. We then link these three mechanisms to ecological consequences, and discuss their implications for conservation. We argue that this framework can reveal the presence of 'sensory danger zones', hotspots of conservation concern where sensory pollutants overlap in space and time with an organism's activity, and foster development of strategic interventions to mitigate the impact of sensory pollutants. Future research that applies this framework will provide critical insight to preserve the natural sensory world.

The accessibility of the vertebrate retina has provided the opportunity to assess various parameters of the visual abilities of a range of species. This thin but complex extension of the brain achieves a large proportion of the necessary visual processing of an optical image before information is delivered to the brain as neural impulses. Studies of the retina as a wholemount or a flattened sheet of neural tissue are abundant due to the large amount of information that can be analysed, as follows: the level of summation or convergence; the coverage, stratification and potential sites of synaptic connections; the spatial resolving power; the arrangement of neuronal arrays or mosaics; electrophysiological access for the recording of responses to visual stimuli; the spatial arrangement of cell dendritic fields; location of retinal ‘blind spots’ (optic nerve, falciform process and pecten); topographic differences in retinal cell sampling; spectral filters, and reflective structures. The present study examines all aspects of the wholemount technique, including enucleation, fixation, retinal extraction, flattening, staining, visualization of labelled cells and stereological mapping of cell density. Uniquely, it highlights the crucial technical and often species-specific differences encountered when examining a range of vertebrate taxa (fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals). This broad comparative approach will enable future studies to overcome technical difficulties, thus permitting larger conceptual questions to be posed regarding the diversity of visual tasks across phylogenetic boundaries.

Animal tolerance to human approaches may be used to establish buffers for wildlife that can minimize the probability that animals will be disturbed by human activity. Alert distance (the distance between an animal and an approaching human at which point the animal begins to exhibit alert behaviours to the human) has been proposed as an indicator of tolerance mainly for waterbirds; however, little is known about its utility for other bird species. The factors that influenced alert distances of four bird species to pedestrian approaches in five large wooded fragments in the city of Madrid (Spain) were analysed. Location of human activity affected only Passer domesticus alert distances, which increased in the proximity of pathways. Habitat structure modified alert distances of all the species (Passer domesticus, Turdus merula, Columba palumbus, and Pica pica), increasing bird tolerance with greater availability of escape cover (shrub and coniferous cover, and shrub height). Alert distances varied among species, with large species being less tolerant of human disturbance than small ones. Alert distance appears to be a more conservative indicator of tolerance than flight distances, because it includes a buffer zone (the difference between alert and flight distance) in which birds may adapt their reaction to the behaviour of visitors. Alert distance may be used in the determination of minimum approaching areas, allowing people to enjoy their visit to parks, and birds to use patches for foraging and breeding without being displaced.

Animal-vehicle collisions cause high levels of vertebrate mortality worldwide, and what goes wrong when animals fail to escape and ultimately collide with vehicles is not well understood. We investigated alert and escape behaviours of captive brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) in response to virtual vehicle approaches of different sizes and at speeds ranging from 60 to 360 km h 21 . Alert and flight initiation distances remained similar across vehicle speeds, and accordingly, alert and flight initiation times decreased at higher vehicle speeds. Thus, avoidance behaviours in cowbirds appeared to be based on distance rather than time available for escape, particularly at 60-150 km h 21 ; however, at higher speeds (more than or equal to 180 km h 21 ) no trend in response behaviour was discernible. As vehicle speed increased, cowbirds did not have enough time to assess the approaching vehicle, and cowbirds generally did not initiate flight with enough time to avoid collision when vehicle speed exceeded 120 km h 21 . Although potentially effective for evading predators, the decision-making process used by cowbirds in our study appears maladaptive in the context of avoiding fast-moving vehicles. Our methodological approach and findings provide a framework to assess how novel management strategies could affect escape rules, and the sensory and cognitive abilities animals use to avoid vehicle collisions.

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Poor communication between academic researchers and wildlife managers limits conservation progress and innovation. As a result, input from overlapping fields, such as animal behaviour, is underused in conservation management despite its demonstrated utility as a conservation tool and countless papers advocating its use. Communication and collaboration across these two disciplines are unlikely to improve without clearly identified management needs and demonstrable impacts of behavioural-based conservation management. To facilitate this process, a team of wildlife managers and animal behaviour researchers conducted a research prioritisation exercise, identifying 50 key questions that have great potential to resolve critical conservation and management problems. The resulting agenda highlights the diversity and extent of advances that both fields could achieve through collaboration.

Several factors, singly or in combination, have proven relevant in promoting nestedness in animal communities (area, isolation, habitat structure, etc.); however, little empirical evidence exists about the role of human disturbance. The goal of this paper was to assess whether human disturbance (pedestrians) may affect bird species composition in such a way as to generate a nested distributional pattern. The study was conducted in an urban fragmented landscape, the city of Madrid, where wooded parks were suitable fragments for many bird species, and had different levels of human visitation. At the community level, the distribution of species was significantly nested in two consecutive breeding seasons. Using two different procedures ("temperature" and "departures" methods) to analyse causality in nestedness, I found that pedestrian rate, fragment size and the diversity of stems were significantly correlated to the nested pattern. When analysed simultaneously, and controlling for their independent effects, these factors still accounted for nestedness. Pedestrian rate was the only factor significantly associated with changes in species composition between years. At the individual species level, 74 and 41% of species were significantly nested in relation to pedestrian rate in 1997 and 1998, respectively; however, these percentages were independent of foraging substrate and body size. Besides the classic area and habitat diversity effects, human disturbance can also promote nestedness: locally, by restraining the time and space of foraging and breeding opportunities, thus reducing fragment suitability, and regionally, by increasing extinction and decreasing colonization probabilities in highly disturbed fragments.