Contagious fear: Escape behavior increases with flock size in European gregarious birds

Morelli, Federico; Benedetti, Yanina; Dı́az, Mario; Grim, Tomáš; Ibáñez‐Álamo, Juan Diego; Jokimäki, Jukka; Kaisanlahti‐Jokimäki, Marja‐Liisa; Tätte, Kunter; Markó, Gábor; Jiang, Yiting; Tryjanowski, Piotr; Møller, Anders Pape

doi:10.1002/ece3.5193

Cited by 65 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…The safe captive environment may have had a similar effect on the Gouldian Finches. Finally, it would be interesting to investigate whether responses would change when larger groups were considered, as group size has been shown to change vigilance [12,21,55].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morph Composition Matters in the Gouldian Finch (Chloebia gouldiae): Involvement of Red-Headed Birds Increases Vigilance

Mettke-Hofmann

2021

Birds

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Animals invest in costly vigilance to detect threats. Joining groups reduces these costs, which can be further reduced in mixed-species assemblages. In colour-polymorphic species, morphs often experience different predation pressure and vary in a variety of traits. However, little is known about differences in vigilance or how group composition affects vigilance. The aim was to investigate whether higher conspicuousness increased vigilance and whether vigilance was reduced in mixed-morph groups like in mixed-species assemblages. I tested vigilance in the colour-polymorphic Gouldian Finch (Chloebia gouldiae). Same sex pairs of different age and of either pure (red-red or black-black) or mixed head colour were exposed to three contexts (familiar, changed and novel environment) and head movements were recorded. All birds reduced the frequency of head movements with increasing novelty, indicating different vigilance strategies (switching from a searching to a tracking strategy) depending on the situation. While vigilance did not differ between morphs, morph composition mattered. Black-headed pairs made fewer head movements than mixed-head colour pairs. Results indicated that conspicuousness did not affect vigilance, possibly due to existing adaptations to reduce predation risk. However, whenever red-headed birds were involved, vigilance increased either because of higher group conspicuousness or prevalence of aggression.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morph Composition Matters in the Gouldian Finch (Chloebia gouldiae): Involvement of Red-Headed Birds Increases Vigilance

Mettke-Hofmann

2021

Birds

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“…A larger number of individuals increases the probability of detecting threats, leading to a positive correlation between FID and flock size ( Elgar, 1984 ; Stankowich and Blumstein, 2005 ; Laursen et al., 2005 ; Mayer et al., 2019 ). However, individuals showing larger FIDs in a flock may cause conspecifics to do the same after flight, causing individuals which by themselves would show shorter FIDs to copy their behaviour and react sooner to threats ( Stankowich and Blumstein, 2005 ; Hingee and Magrath, 2009 ; Weston et al., 2012 ; Morelli et al., 2019 ), which may also lead to a larger flock FID.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face masks matter: Eurasian tree sparrows show reduced fear responses to people wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic

Jiang

Liu

Zhang

et al. 2020

Global Ecology and Conservation

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Continuous exposure to human activity has led to considerable behavioural changes in some wildlife populations. Animals are more likely to survive in a changing environment by adjusting their behaviour to repeatedly occurring but harmless stimulations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in late 2019, face masks were recommended to the public to prevent the spread of pathogens. In this context, we compared the flight initiation distance (FID) of the Eurasian tree sparrow ( Passer montanus ), a commonly seen bird across China, in Yibin and Dazhou, Sichuan, in response to people with or without face masks. After continuous exposure to people wearing face masks for nearly six months, sparrows evidently became adapted to people wearing face masks, and correspondingly showed shorter FIDs in response to people wearing masks. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that birds show reduced fear responses to people wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results suggest a novel aspect of short-term adaptation of wildlife to human behaviour, and that the learning ability of sparrows allows them to adjust their behaviours to adapt to such subtle changes in the environment.

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“…Because group size may influence vigilance and escape responses (Morelli et al, ), we also conducted a second analysis of the effect of drone height on escape response and FID, with group size as an additional covariate. However, these models did not have appreciably better fit, and the effect of group size was negligible and did not influence the interpretation of the main effect (Tables A1 and A2 in Appendix ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Escape responses of terrestrial and aquatic birds to drones: Towards a code of practice to minimize disturbance

Weston

O’Brien

Kostoglou

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Advances in human technology can lead to widespread and rapid increases in interactions between wildlife and potentially disturbing stimuli. The recreational use of drones is widespread and increasing, yet laws and codes of practice which aim to manage deleterious impacts (e.g. negative interactions with wildlife) are reactionary, unscientific and inadequate. One prominent potential negative effect of drones interacting with birds is disturbance; the disruption of normal states caused by responses such as escape. We measure avian escape responses to an approaching drone (n = 561 across 22 species) to inform the development of a code of practice to manage drone‐induced disturbance. Approaches were made at a relatively high and low altitude (10 and 4 m), and at different take‐off distances, both of which are candidate prescriptions for a code of practice. Flight‐initiation distance varied between species, but not between the altitudes tested. The probability of eliciting an escape response was high, and 14.6% higher at the lower altitude (at which 88.4% of overflies resulted in an escape response). Our response rates (from terrestrial and aquatic species) are higher than those reported for different birds in other places, most of which were water or seabirds. The probability of a drone take‐off in itself eliciting a response was low (<20%) when the drone take‐off was >40 m away, and decreased further with increasing distance from birds, with no escapes occurring >120 m. Policy implications. For our sample, no drone take‐off closer than 100 m, and no flight within 100 m would eliminate the vast majority of escape responses by birds. Required separation distances between drones and wildlife may exceed those required for other human activities, such as for walkers.

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Contagious fear: Escape behavior increases with flock size in European gregarious birds

Cited by 65 publications

References 75 publications

Morph Composition Matters in the Gouldian Finch (Chloebia gouldiae): Involvement of Red-Headed Birds Increases Vigilance

Morph Composition Matters in the Gouldian Finch (Chloebia gouldiae): Involvement of Red-Headed Birds Increases Vigilance

Face masks matter: Eurasian tree sparrows show reduced fear responses to people wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic

Escape responses of terrestrial and aquatic birds to drones: Towards a code of practice to minimize disturbance

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