Anthropogenic noise pollution reverses grouping behaviour in hermit crabs

Tidau, Svenja; Briffa, Mark

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.03.010

Cited by 33 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Improving our understanding of the social responses to turbidity and other changes driven by anthropogenic activity, such as ocean acidification (Duteil et al, 2016) and increasing noise (Herbert-Read, Kremer, Bruintjes, Radford, & Ioannou, 2017;Tidau & Briffa, 2019), is essential in implementing appropriate mitigation strategies for natural populations, given the predicted increase in anthropogenic disturbance in aquatic habitats and potential widespread implication for individual fitness and population viability (Nel et al, 2009). Our study suggests that sticklebacks can respond plastically to increased turbidity by slowing their foraging and making more accurate decisions, which may minimise short-term negative impacts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turbidity increases risk perception but constrains collective behaviour during foraging by fish shoals

Chamberlain

Ioannou

2019

Animal Behaviour

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Turbidity reduces the distance that animals can detect food, predators and conspecifics. How turbidity affects decision making in social contexts has rarely been investigated; moreover, it is unknown whether decreased shoaling in turbid water is due to visual constraints (a mechanistic explanation) or a reduced perception of predation risk (an adaptive explanation). Using a V-shaped decision making arena, we investigated the effect of turbidity on foraging in groups of threespined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). In turbid conditions, fish took longer to leave a refuge, longer to locate the food in one of the arms, and consumed less food once it was found. This increase in risk-averse behaviour was further supported by improved accuracy over repeated trials and a speed-accuracy trade-off only being observed in turbid conditions. Despite evidence of a higher perception of risk in turbid water, the fish to first choose an arm of the maze was more likely to be alone in turbid water, thus this individual lost the anti-predatory and decision making benefits of collective behaviour. This suggests that turbidity acts mechanistically as a visual constraint, shifting decisions away from being made collectively to being made by individuals separated from the group, which could have potential impacts for wild prey populations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turbidity increases risk perception but constrains collective behaviour during foraging by fish shoals

Chamberlain

Ioannou

2019

Animal Behaviour

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“…Ambient sound can therefore have a range of impacts on an animal's ability to carry out important behaviours, such as communicating with conspecifics, social behaviour, courtship, foraging and avoiding predators ( Schaub et al, 2008 ; Chan et al, 2010 ; Bunkley et al, 2015 ; Mahjoub et al, 2015 ; de Jong et al, 2018 ; Tidau and Briffa, 2019 ; Zhou et al, 2019 ). However, all three mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and teasing apart underlying reasons for noise effects can be difficult ( Luo et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic deterrents influence foraging activity, flight and echolocation behaviour of free-flying bats

Gilmour

Holderied

Pickering³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Acoustic deterrents have shown potential as a viable mitigation measure to reduce human impacts on bats, however, the mechanisms underpinning acoustic deterrence of bats have yet to be explored. Bats avoid ambient ultrasound in their environment and alter their echolocation calls in response to masking noise. Using stereo thermal videogrammetry and acoustic methods, we tested predictions that i) bats would avoid acoustic deterrents and forage and social call less in a ‘treated airspace’; ii) deterrents would cause bats to fly with more direct flight paths akin to commuting behaviour and in line with a reduction in foraging activity, resulting in increased flight speed and decreased flight tortuosity; iii) bats would alter their echolocation call structure in response to the masking deterrent sound. As predicted, overall bat activity was reduced by 30% and we recorded a significant reduction in counts of Pipistrellus pygmaeus (27%), Myotis spp. (probably M. daubentonii) (26%) and Nyctalus and Eptesicus spp. (68%) passes. P. pygmaeus feeding buzzes were also reduced by the deterrent in relation to general activity (by 38%), however social calls were not (only 23% reduction). Bats also increased their flight speed and reduced the tortuosity of their flight paths and P. pygmaeus reduced echolocation call bandwidth and start frequency of calls in response to deterrent playback, probably due to the masking effect of the sound. Deterrence could therefore be used to remove bats from areas where they forage, for example wind turbines and roads, where they may be under threat from direct mortality.

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“…While some mechanisms that cause individuals to be safer from predators in groups do not rely on group-level decision making or information transfer, such as the dilution and confusion effects (Foster & Treherne, 1981;Duffield & Ioannou, 2017), improved decision making by groups can act to further reduce the risk of predation (Magurran et al, 1985;Godin et al, 1988;Ward et al, 2011). Little attention has been given to how ecological factors affect group decision making or collective behaviour more generally (Chamberlain & Ioannou, 2019;Tidau & Briffa, 2019;Ginnaw et al, 2020), and only a handful of studies have examined how collective decision making changes with predation risk (Ioannou et al, 2017;Herbert-Read et al, 2019). Despite the differences between this study and that of Clément et al (2017), the general trend found here, that group size was more important in decision speed in fish from low predation habitats, supports their findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of group size on the speed of decision making depends on compromise and predation risk across populations in the guppy Poecilia reticulata

Wade

Ramnarine

Ioannou

2020

Behav.

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While larger groups tend to be better at making decisions, very few studies have explored how ecological variables, including predation pressure, shape how group size affects decision making. Our cross-population study of wild-caught guppies (Poecilia reticulata) shows that leading individuals from larger groups made faster decisions when deciding to leave the start area and reach the junction of a Y-maze, which allows for compromise over timing. However, at the junction of the Y when the fish needed to make a mutually exclusive decision that does not allow for compromise, there was no effect of group size in high predation fish on decision speed. In fish from low predation habitats, speed was fastest at the intermediate group size with a decline in speed in the largest group size. These results challenge the view that decision making always improves with group size and shows this effect depends on ecological and decision-making conditions.

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Anthropogenic noise pollution reverses grouping behaviour in hermit crabs

Cited by 33 publications

References 84 publications

Turbidity increases risk perception but constrains collective behaviour during foraging by fish shoals

Turbidity increases risk perception but constrains collective behaviour during foraging by fish shoals

Acoustic deterrents influence foraging activity, flight and echolocation behaviour of free-flying bats

The effect of group size on the speed of decision making depends on compromise and predation risk across populations in the guppy Poecilia reticulata

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