Ambient noise increases missed detections in nestling birds

Abstract

Ambient noise can mask acoustic cues, making their detection and discrimination difficult for receivers. This can result in two types of error: missed detections, when receivers fail to respond to the appropriate cues, and false alarms, when they respond to inappropriate cues. Nestling birds are error-prone, sometimes failing to beg when parents arrive with food (committing missed detections) or begging in response to stimuli other than a parent's arrival (committing false alarms). Here, we ask whether the frequency of these errors by nestling tree swallows ( Tachycineta bicolor ) increases in the presence of noise. We found that nestlings exposed to noise had more missed detections than their unexposed counterparts. We also found that false alarms remained low overall and did not differ significantly between noise and quiet treatments. Our results suggest that nestlings living in noisy environments may be less responsive to their parents than nestlings in quieter environments.

Vibratory noise in anthropogenic habitats and its effect on prey detection in a web-building spider

“…Animals have been shown to alter their behaviours in response to shifts in airborne acoustic noise level (e.g. Leonard & Horn, 2012;Quinn, Whittingham, Butler, & Cresswell, 2006;Rabin et al, 2006;Slabbekoorn & Peet, 2003), and here we show that similar mechanisms could be operating on the vibratory modality as well. We hypothesize that vibratory noise (medium and high noise levels) may exert two opposing effects on web spiders' prey detection sensitivity: (1) a sensitivity-increasing effect and (2) a masking effect.…”

“…Strong vibratory noise originating from the surrounding environment may interfere with the abilities of spiders to sense and respond to biologically relevant stimuli on the web, and may force a trade-off between missed detection and false alarms. Spiders are expected to adjust their responses according to noise level, similar to that previously shown in nestling birds (Leonard & Horn, 2012).…”

“…Anthropogenic noise sources such as automobile traffic and construction create low-frequency substrate-borne vibrations that may overlap with frequencies commonly used by arthropods, and may propagate with only moderate attenuation (for example, the 16e250 Hz vibrations from underground rail systems; Kurzweil, 1979). Impacts of such noises may parallel those of acoustic noises such as traffic, wind turbines, shipping and seismic exploration (Hildebrand, 2009), which influence vocalization (Di Iorio & Clark, 2010;Lampe, Reinhold, & Schmoll, 2013;Lampe, Schmoll, Franzke, & Reinhold, 2012;Slabbekoorn & Peet, 2003), antipredator (Rabin, Coss, & Owings, 2006), foraging (Croll, Clark, Calambokidis, Ellison, & Tershy, 2001;Leonard & Horn, 2012;Schaub, Ostwald, & Siemers, 2008) and reproductive behaviours (Bee & Swanson, 2007;Halfwerk, Holleman, Lessells, & Slabbekoorn, 2011). …”

Effects of Experimental Noise Exposure on Songbird Nesting Behaviors and Nest Success

“…Noise pollution has recently been associated with changes in animal behavior (Quinn et al 2006, Leonard andHorn. 2012), physiology (Crino et al 2013) and reproductive success (Halfwerk et al 2011, Kight et al 2012).…”

“…However, the mechanisms responsible for the decline are not fully known. To date, existing evidence suggest that noise can negatively affect breeding success by influencing settlement patterns (Kleist et al in review), decreasing pairing success (Gross et al 2010) and possibly by disrupting parentoffspring communication (Leonard and Horn 2012), but noise may also disrupt incubation rates and rhythms and nestling provisioning behaviors critical for reproductive success.…”