Département Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie, Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Université de Strasbourg, France.
BMC Ecol. 2012 Jul 11;12:10. doi: 10.1186/1472-6785-12-10.
A central question for ecologists is the extent to which anthropogenic disturbances (e.g. tourism) might impact wildlife and affect the systems under study. From a research perspective, identifying the effects of human disturbance caused by research-related activities is crucial in order to understand and account for potential biases and derive appropriate conclusions from the data.
Here, we document a case of biological adjustment to chronic human disturbance in a colonial seabird, the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus), breeding on remote and protected islands of the Southern ocean. Using heart rate (HR) as a measure of the stress response, we show that, in a colony with areas exposed to the continuous presence of humans (including scientists) for over 50 years, penguins have adjusted to human disturbance and habituated to certain, but not all, types of stressors. When compared to birds breeding in relatively undisturbed areas, birds in areas of high chronic human disturbance were found to exhibit attenuated HR responses to acute anthropogenic stressors of low-intensity (i.e. sounds or human approaches) to which they had been subjected intensely over the years. However, such attenuation was not apparent for high-intensity stressors (i.e. captures for scientific research) which only a few individuals experience each year.
Habituation to anthropogenic sounds/approaches could be an adaptation to deal with chronic innocuous stressors, and beneficial from a research perspective. Alternately, whether penguins have actually habituated to anthropogenic disturbances over time or whether human presence has driven the directional selection of human-tolerant phenotypes, remains an open question with profound ecological and conservation implications, and emphasizes the need for more knowledge on the effects of human disturbance on long-term studied populations.
生态学家的一个核心问题是，人为干扰（如旅游）在何种程度上可能影响野生动物，并影响所研究的系统。从研究的角度来看，确定与研究相关的活动引起的人为干扰的影响至关重要，以便理解和解释潜在的偏差，并从数据中得出适当的结论。
在这里，我们记录了一种在南大洋偏远和受保护的岛屿上繁殖的繁殖的群居海鸟，即王企鹅（Aptenodytes patagonicus），对慢性人为干扰的生物学适应的情况。我们使用心率（HR）作为应激反应的衡量标准，表明在一个有人类（包括科学家）连续存在超过 50 年的区域的繁殖地，企鹅已经适应了人类的干扰，并习惯了某些但不是所有类型的压力源。与在相对未受干扰的地区繁殖的鸟类相比，在受到高强度慢性人为干扰的地区繁殖的鸟类，对低强度（即声音或人类接近）的急性人为压力源的 HR 反应表现出减弱，而这些压力源在过去多年中一直强烈地作用于它们。然而，对于高强度的压力源（即每年只有少数个体经历的科学研究中的捕获），这种衰减并不明显。
对人为声音/接近的习惯可能是一种适应处理慢性无害压力源的方法，从研究的角度来看是有益的。或者，随着时间的推移，企鹅是否真的已经适应了人为干扰，或者人类的存在是否导致了对人类耐受表型的定向选择，这仍然是一个悬而未决的问题，具有深远的生态和保护意义，并强调需要更多地了解人为干扰对长期研究种群的影响。
