Effects of ambient noise on zebra finch vigilance and foraging efficiency

Ambient noise can affect the availability of acoustic information to animals, altering both foraging and vigilance behaviour. Using captive zebra finches Taeniopygia guttata, we examined the effect of ambient broadband noise on foraging decisions. Birds were given a choice between foraging in a quiet area where conspecific calls could be heard or a noisy area where these calls would be masked. Birds foraging in noisy areas spent a significantly more time vigilant than those in quiet areas, resulting in less efficient foraging. Despite this there was no significant difference in the amount of time spent in the two noise regimes. However there did appear a preference for initially choosing quiet patches during individuals’ second trial. These results emphasise how masking noise can influence the foraging and anti-predation behaviour of animals, which is particularly relevant as anthropogenic noise becomes increasingly prevalent in the natural world.

[1]  Andrew N. Radford,et al.  Cross-modal impacts of anthropogenic noise on information use , 2016, Current Biology.

[2]  Kathryn E. Sieving,et al.  When the birds go unheard: highway noise disrupts information transfer between bird species , 2016, Biology Letters.

[3]  Kevin R Crooks,et al.  The costs of chronic noise exposure for terrestrial organisms. , 2010, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[4]  Guangxu Liu,et al.  Noise in the Sea and Its Impacts on Marine Organisms , 2015, International journal of environmental research and public health.

[5]  R. Zann.  The Zebra Finch: A Synthesis of Field and Laboratory Studies , 1996 .

[6]  Sasha R. X. Dall,et al.  Information and its use by animals in evolutionary ecology. , 2005, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[7]  Joachim Ostwald,et al.  Foraging bats avoid noise , 2008, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[8]  P. Warren,et al.  Urban bioacoustics: it's not just noise , 2006, Animal Behaviour.

[9]  Jessica L. Blickley,et al.  Experimental Evidence for the Effects of Chronic Anthropogenic Noise on Abundance of Greater Sage‐Grouse at Leks , 2012, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[10]  S. Simpson,et al.  Anthropogenic noise compromises antipredator behaviour in European eels , 2015, Global change biology.

[11]  C. D. Francis.  Vocal traits and diet explain avian sensitivities to anthropogenic noise , 2015, Global change biology.

[12]  Michael Macht,et al.  Scanning Behavior of Rats During Eating Under Stressful Noise , 1997, Physiology & Behavior.

[13]  G. Beauchamp.  INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN ACTIVITY AND EXPLORATION INFLUENCE LEADERSHIP IN PAIRS OF FORAGING ZEBRA FINCHES , 2000 .

[14]  Clinton D. Francis,et al.  Noise Pollution Changes Avian Communities and Species Interactions , 2009, Current Biology.

[15]  C. ten Cate,et al.  Low-frequency songs lose their potency in noisy urban conditions , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[16]  J. Barber,et al.  A phantom road experiment reveals traffic noise is an invisible source of habitat degradation , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[17]  S. Simpson,et al.  Size-dependent physiological responses of shore crabs to single and repeated playback of ship noise , 2013, Biology Letters.

[18]  David R. Wilson,et al.  Anthropogenic noise affects song structure in red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) , 2011, Journal of Experimental Biology.

[19]  Andrew N. Radford,et al.  Acoustic Noise Induces Attention Shifts and Reduces Foraging Performance in Three-Spined Sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) , 2011, PloS one.

[20]  R. Mulder,et al.  Geographically pervasive effects of urban noise on frequency and syllable rate of songs and calls in silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis) , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[21]  Daniel T. Blumstein,et al.  Attention, noise, and implications for wildlife conservation and management , 2011 .

[22]  J. Hildebrand.  Anthropogenic and natural sources of ambient noise in the ocean , 2009 .

[23]  Andrew N. Radford,et al.  The development of alarm call behaviour in mammals and birds , 2009, Animal Behaviour.

[24]  Nathan J. Kleist,et al.  Sound settlement: noise surpasses land cover in explaining breeding habitat selection of secondary cavity-nesting birds. , 2017, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[25]  Wouter Halfwerk,et al.  Behavioural Ecology: Noise Annoys at Community Level , 2009, Current Biology.

[26]  S. Simpson,et al.  Noise negatively affects foraging and antipredator behaviour in shore crabs , 2013, Animal Behaviour.

[27]  Donald H. Owings,et al.  The effects of wind turbines on antipredator behavior in California ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) , 2006 .

[28]  Shigeru Watanabe,et al.  Contact calls: Information and social function , 2009 .

[29]  George Wittemyer,et al.  A synthesis of two decades of research documenting the effects of noise on wildlife , 2016, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[30]  Thierry Aubin,et al.  SEEWAVE, A FREE MODULAR TOOL FOR SOUND ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS , 2008 .

[31]  R. Young,et al.  Anthropogenic noise reduces bird species richness and diversity in urban parks , 2017 .

[32]  G. Beauchamp.  What is the magnitude of the group-size effect on vigilance? , 2008 .

[33]  H. Brumm,et al.  Acoustic Communication in Noise , 2005 .

[34]  C. D. Francis,et al.  Chapter 9: Are nest predators absent from noisy areas or unable to locate nests? , 2012 .

[35]  Luc-Alain Giraldeau,et al.  Head position as an indicator of producer and scrounger tactics in a ground-feeding bird , 2001, Animal Behaviour.

[36]  S. Simpson,et al.  Anthropogenic noise increases fish mortality by predation , 2016, Nature Communications.

[37]  Luis J. Villanueva-Rivera,et al.  Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape , 2011 .

[38]  A. Kamil,et al.  The cost of limited attention in blue jays , 2000 .

[39]  H. Slabbekoorn,et al.  Birdsong and anthropogenic noise: implications and applications for conservation , 2008, Molecular ecology.

[40]  Daniel T. Blumstein,et al.  Anthropogenic noise affects risk assessment and attention: the distracted prey hypothesis , 2010, Biology Letters.

[41]  Nathan J. Kleist,et al.  Noise pollution alters ecological services: enhanced pollination and disrupted seed dispersal , 2012, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[42]  J. Verdolin.  Meta-analysis of foraging and predation risk trade-offs in terrestrial systems , 2006, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

[43]  U. Candolin.  The use of multiple cues in mate choice , 2003, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[44]  John L. Quinn,et al.  Noise, predation risk compensation and vigilance in the chaffinch Fringilla coelebs , 2006 .

[45]  Caitlin R. Kight,et al.  Anthropogenic noise is associated with reductions in the productivity of breeding Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis). , 2012, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[46]  A. Radford,et al.  Anthropogenic noise disrupts use of vocal information about predation risk. , 2016, Environmental pollution.

[47]  Kevin R. Crooks,et al.  Road traffic noise modifies behaviour of a keystone species , 2014, Animal Behaviour.

[48]  A. Meillère,et al.  Impact of chronic noise exposure on antipredator behavior: an experiment in breeding house sparrows , 2015 .

[49]  Carrie V. Kappel,et al.  A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems , 2008, Science.

[50]  G. Ruxton,et al.  Choice of Foraging Area with Respect to Predation Risk in Redshanks: The Effects of Weather and Predator Activity , 1999 .

[51]  Mark P. Johnson,et al.  Individual right whales call louder in increased environmental noise , 2011, Biology Letters.

[52]  H. Slabbekoorn,et al.  Fluid dynamics: Vortex rings in a constant electric field , 2003, Nature.

[53]  Andrew N. Radford,et al.  Acoustic noise reduces foraging success in two sympatric fish species via different mechanisms , 2014, Animal Behaviour.

[54]  D. Bates,et al.  Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4 , 2014, 1406.5823.

[55]  Philip A. Stephens,et al.  Model selection and model averaging in behavioural ecology: the utility of the IT-AIC framework , 2010, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

[56]  E. Charnov.  Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem. , 1976, Theoretical population biology.

[57]  Nicolas Mathevon,et al.  Mate recognition by female zebra finch: Analysis of individuality in male call and first investigations on female decoding process , 2008, Behavioural Processes.

[58]  Caitlin R. Kight,et al.  Eastern Bluebirds Alter their Song in Response to Anthropogenic Changes in the Acoustic Environment. , 2015, Integrative and comparative biology.

[59]  S. L. Lima,et al.  Back to the basics of antipredatory vigilance: can nonvigilant animals detect attack? , 1999, Animal Behaviour.

[60]  G. Wittemyer,et al.  Road noise causes earlier predator detection and flight response in a free-ranging mammal , 2016 .

[61]  B. Siemers,et al.  Hunting at the highway: traffic noise reduces foraging efficiency in acoustic predators , 2010, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[62]  Kimberley J. Mathot,et al.  Increasing vulnerability to predation increases preference for the scrounger foraging tactic , 2007 .