Behavioural Ecology: Noise Annoys at Community Level

Abstract

A new study on the impact of anthropogenic noise on birds takes a behavioural discipline to the level of community ecology: noise can not only harm individual species but also alter species relationships.

Can human disturbance promote nestedness? Songbirds and noise in urban parks as a case study

“…To clarify if human disturbance could affect nestedness in vertebrate assemblages, Fernández-Juricic (2002) studied bird communities in urban parks with different pedestrian rates, an environmental variable which was related to the nested pattern in bird community structure. Even so, this relationship between human disturbances and bird assemblages has not been found by other authors (Platt & Lill, variables, it is hard to identify anthropogenic noise as the principal source of negative impacts on birds (Francis, Ortega, & Cruz, 2009;Pater, Grubb, & Delaney, 2009;Slabbekoorn & Halfwerk, 2009). As a result, the independent contribution of high levels of anthropogenic noise to those impacts often remains ambiguous (Barber et al, 2009).…”

“…In this way, our study evidenced that anthropogenic noise effects infiltrate beyond the community level (Francis et al, 2009;Slabbekoorn & Halfwerk, 2009) and reach up to the metacommunity level, since noise pollution promoted an ordered sequence of changes in bird species richness and composition in urban parks at a regional scale, the whole Puebla-Cholula Metropolitan Area.…”

The effect of temporal variation in sound exposure on swimming and foraging behaviour of captive zebrafish

“…More applied insights for outdoor conditions and data on more long-term effects that amount to fitness consequences require more and different studies Radford et al, 2014;Slabbekoorn et al, 2010). However, the accumulating evidence for a possible impact of sound exposure on predator foraging performance means that consequences of sound pollution in the natural environment are also likely to go beyond single-species effects (Francis, Kleist, Davidson, et al, 2012;Francis et al, 2009Francis et al, , 2011aFrancis et al, , 2011bShafiei Sabet et al, 2015;Slabbekoorn & Halfwerk, 2009).…”

Does Urbanization Affect Predation of Bird Nests? A Meta-Analysis

“…Environmental characteristics of urban habitats, such as noise (Slabbekoorn and Halfwerk, 2009), light (Navara and Nelson, 2007), and vegetation (Chace and Walsh, 2006) can also affect predation rates, again either positively or negatively. For example, high noise levels in cities may increase the difficulty for prey animals to detect predation risk and to respond to it, resulting in increased predation rates (Templeton et al, 2016).…”