Natural sensory environments, despite strong potential for structuring systems, have been neglected in ecological theory. Here, we test the hypothesis that intense natural acoustic environments shape animal distributions and behavior by broadcasting whitewater river noise in montane riparian zones for two summers. Additionally, we use spectrally-altered river noise to explicitly test the effects of masking as a mechanism driving patterns. Using data from abundance and activity surveys across 60 locations, over two full breeding seasons, we find that both birds and bats avoid areas with high sound levels, while birds avoid frequencies that overlap with birdsong, and bats avoid higher frequencies more generally. We place 720 clay caterpillars in willows, and find that intense sound levels decrease foraging behavior in birds. For bats, we deploy foraging tests across 144 nights, consisting of robotic insect-wing mimics, and speakers broadcasting bat prey sounds, and find that bats appear to switch hunting strategies from passive listening to aerial hawking as sound levels increase. Natural acoustic environments are an underappreciated niche axis, a conclusion that serves to escalate the urgency of mitigating human-created noise.
Bats are often useful bioindicators for ecosystem health and are disproportionately affected by sources of night light. Changes in bat behavior may manifest in two different ways: 1) some bats are light-exploiting and therefore attracted to areas with light sources, and 2) some are light-shy, traveling far out of their way to avoid lit areas. Grand Teton National Park provides an excellent natural system to study the effects of lights on bat behavior, as the park supports a large community of over a dozen species, as well as sizeable human infrastructure that generates night light. From June to August 2018 we used passive acoustic monitoring and radiotelemetry to study the activity and space use of bats in Colter Bay Village, specifically in the large parking lot at the center of the village and the adjacent naturally dark areas. We recorded 98,238 echolocation call sequences from 11 species, with the vast majority (~69,000) occurring in lit areas. Further, we recorded 4,665 location fixes from 32 tagged individuals from three species and, similarly, most location fixes (2,970) were in lit areas. All day roosts were found within buildings. We discuss the importance of these results and our work moving forward. Featured photo by Shawna Wolf, taken from the AMK Ranch photo collection.
This review article discusses the structural and functional abnormalities observed in the hippocampus of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The hippocampus plays a critical role in regulating emotions and memories, which has been implicated in the pathophysiology of BPD. The review summarizes the findings from various studies that have used neuroimaging techniques to investigate the hippocampus in BPD. The results suggest that individuals with BPD exhibit reduced hippocampal volume, altered hippocampal activation patterns, and disrupted connectivity with other brain regions. These abnormalities have been linked to several clinical features of BPD, including emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and unstable self-image. The review also discusses potential mechanisms underlying these abnormalities, such as childhood trauma and chronic stress. Overall, this review highlights the importance of the hippocampus in the etiology of BPD and emphasizes the need for further research to understand its role in this complex disorder fully.
Bat and insect populations are at risk globally, and identifying factors that may influence bat and insect populations alongside mitigation techniques for anthropogenic factors that may negatively influence these taxa will be crucial for their conservation. To identify landscape characteristics that influence bats throughout Grand Teton National Park, we placed passive acoustic monitors throughout the park in areas with different microhabitat characteristics to identify factors that influence activity. Additionally, we developed a R package, `EcoCountHelper`, to assist wildlife managers in analyzing ecological count data similar to our bat monitoring data. As a demonstration of the package, we conducted a GLMM-based analysis of this landscape-scale bat monitoring data. Following our broad-scale assessment of bat activity in Grand Teton National Park, we also installed experimental street lights capable of emitting both red and white light throughout Grand Teton National Park’s Colter Bay area, and monitored bat and insect activity while altering the color of light illuminating a focal parking lot to assess red light’s ability to mitigate the impacts of artificial light on bats and insects. Through our park-wide acoustic monitoring, we found that bat habitat use varied for the seven species we fit candidate models for, with distance to water, the number of buildings suitable for roosting, and forest cover all influencing activity levels for different species of bats throughout the park. As a result of our fine-spatial-scale research surrounding light pollution mitigation, we also found that red light does not seem to be an effective method of promoting bat activity in artificially illuminated areas that is similar to that of unlit areas, but insects did exhibit more similar sample counts to unlit areas during red light treatment periods than white light treatment periods. Our findings both provide valuable information for land and wildlife managers in Grand Teton National Park to conserve bat and insect populations, and highlight the need for additional research surrounding bat-human interactions. Additionally, we hope our development of a streamlined R package for GLMM analysis using count data will facilitate and promote robust and reproducible analyses for wildlife managers and researchers alike.
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