Ritson Robert, Ranglack Dustin H, Bickford Nate
Department of Biology, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, NE 68849, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2019 Feb 14;9(2):59. doi: 10.3390/ani9020059.
A wide variety of environmental stimuli can influence the behavior of animals including temperature, weather, light, lunar and seasonal cycles, seismic activity, as well as other perturbations to their circadian rhythm. Solar eclipses offer a unique opportunity to evaluate the relative influence of unexpected darkness on behavior of animals due to their sudden interference with local light levels and meteorology. Though occasionally bizarre, modern studies have lent support to the idea that at least some individuals of certain species display altered behavior during these events. A comparison of informal observations of animal behavior during solar eclipse from social media (i.e., March for Science Facebook discussion) to those conducted scientifically (published literature) can elucidate how well this topic is being covered. Describing which species and behaviors are covered in each source can reveal gaps in the literature which can emphasize areas for future research. We enumerated a total of 685 observations of approximately 48 different types of animals reacting to the 2017 Great American Solar Eclipse from over 800 posts on the discussion. The animals most frequently reported on social media as reacting to the eclipse were invertebrates (40% of social media observations) and birds (35% of social media observations). A total of 26 published studies recorded 169 behavior observations of approximately 131 different animal species. The group with the highest number of observations in the literature were birds with 62 records (37% of literature observations). Most observations reported decreases in activity (38.7% of bird observations) followed by increases in vocalization (24.2% of bird observations). There were approximately 30 different species of invertebrate observed (24% of literature observations), most frequently reported of which were zooplankton (14.6% of invertebrate observations).
各种各样的环境刺激都能影响动物的行为，包括温度、天气、光照、月相和季节循环、地震活动以及其他对其昼夜节律的干扰。日食提供了一个独特的机会，可用于评估意外黑暗对动物行为的相对影响，因为日食会突然干扰当地的光照水平和气象条件。尽管有时很怪异，但现代研究支持了这样一种观点，即至少某些物种的一些个体在这些事件中会表现出行为改变。将社交媒体上关于日食期间动物行为的非正式观察（即“为科学游行”脸书讨论）与科学研究（已发表文献）进行比较，可以阐明这个主题的研究覆盖程度。描述每个来源中涵盖的物种和行为，可以揭示文献中的空白，从而突出未来的研究领域。我们从讨论中的800多篇帖子中，总共列举了685条关于约48种不同动物对2017年美国日全食做出反应的观察记录。在社交媒体上最常被报道对日全食有反应的动物是无脊椎动物（占社交媒体观察记录的40%）和鸟类（占社交媒体观察记录的35%）。共有26项已发表研究记录了约131种不同动物的169条行为观察记录。文献中观察记录数量最多的类别是鸟类，有62条记录（占文献观察记录的37%）。大多数观察记录报告活动减少（占鸟类观察记录的38.7%），其次是发声增加（占鸟类观察记录的24.2%）。观察到的无脊椎动物约有30种不同物种（占文献观察记录的24%），其中最常被报道的是浮游动物（占无脊椎动物观察记录的14.6%）。
