Sensory Ecology Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Eberhard-Gwinner-Straße, 82319, Seewiesen, Germany.
Jilin Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, 130024, Changchun, China.
Glob Chang Biol. 2015 Sep;21(9):3278-89. doi: 10.1111/gcb.12997. Epub 2015 Jul 4.
The influence of human activity on the biosphere is increasing. While direct damage (e.g. habitat destruction) is relatively well understood, many activities affect wildlife in less apparent ways. Here, we investigate how anthropogenic noise impairs foraging, which has direct consequences for animal survival and reproductive success. Noise can disturb foraging via several mechanisms that may operate simultaneously, and thus, their effects could not be disentangled hitherto. We developed a diagnostic framework that can be applied to identify the potential mechanisms of disturbance in any species capable of detecting the noise. We tested this framework using Daubenton's bats, which find prey by echolocation. We found that traffic noise reduced foraging efficiency in most bats. Unexpectedly, this effect was present even if the playback noise did not overlap in frequency with the prey echoes. Neither overlapping noise nor nonoverlapping noise influenced the search effort required for a successful prey capture. Hence, noise did not mask prey echoes or reduce the attention of bats. Instead, noise acted as an aversive stimulus that caused avoidance response, thereby reducing foraging efficiency. We conclude that conservation policies may seriously underestimate numbers of species affected and the multilevel effects on animal fitness, if the mechanisms of disturbance are not considered.
人类活动对生物圈的影响正在增加。虽然直接的破坏（例如栖息地的破坏）相对来说比较容易理解，但许多活动以不太明显的方式影响野生动物。在这里，我们研究了人为噪声是如何影响觅食的，因为这对动物的生存和繁殖成功率有直接的影响。噪声可能通过几种同时起作用的机制来干扰觅食，因此迄今为止，这些机制的影响无法被区分开来。我们开发了一个诊断框架，可以用来识别任何能够检测到噪声的物种中潜在的干扰机制。我们使用大耳蝠来测试这个框架，大耳蝠通过回声定位来寻找猎物。我们发现，交通噪声降低了大多数蝙蝠的觅食效率。出乎意料的是，即使播放的噪声与猎物的回声没有重叠，这种影响仍然存在。重叠噪声或非重叠噪声都没有影响成功捕捉猎物所需的搜索努力。因此，噪声并没有掩盖猎物的回声，也没有降低蝙蝠的注意力。相反，噪声作为一种厌恶刺激，引起回避反应，从而降低了觅食效率。我们的结论是，如果不考虑干扰机制，保护政策可能会严重低估受影响的物种数量以及对动物适应能力的多层次影响。
