Rast Wanja, Barthel Leon M F, Berger Anne
Department Evolutionary Ecology, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Alfred-Kowalke-Straße 17, 10315 Berlin, Germany.
Berlin Brandenburg Institute of Advanced Biodiversity Research (BBIB), 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Animals (Basel). 2019 Jul 18;9(7):455. doi: 10.3390/ani9070455.
Understanding the impact of human activities on wildlife behavior and fitness can improve their sustainability. In a pilot study, we wanted to identify behavioral responses to anthropogenic stress in an urban species during a semi-experimental field study. We equipped eight urban hedgehogs (; four per sex) with bio-loggers to record their behavior before and during a mega music festival (2 × 19 days) in Treptower Park, Berlin. We used GPS (Global Positioning System) to monitor spatial behavior, VHF (Very High Frequency)-loggers to quantify daily nest utilization, and accelerometers to distinguish between different behaviors at a high resolution and to calculate daily disturbance (using Degrees of Functional Coupling). The hedgehogs showed clear behavioral differences between the pre-festival and festival phases. We found evidence supporting highly individual strategies, varying between spatial and temporal evasion of the disturbance. Averaging the responses of the individual animals or only examining one behavioral parameter masked these potentially different individual coping strategies. Using a meaningful combination of different minimal-invasive bio-logger types, we were able to show high inter-individual behavioral variance of urban hedgehogs in response to an anthropogenic disturbance, which might be a precondition to persist successfully in urban environments.
了解人类活动对野生动物行为和健康状况的影响有助于提高它们的可持续性。在一项试点研究中，我们希望在半实验性野外研究中确定一种城市物种对人为压力的行为反应。我们为八只城市刺猬（雌雄各四只）佩戴了生物记录器，以记录它们在柏林特雷普托公园举行的大型音乐节之前和期间（2×19天）的行为。我们使用全球定位系统（GPS）监测空间行为，使用甚高频（VHF）记录器量化每日巢穴利用率，并使用加速度计以高分辨率区分不同行为并计算每日干扰程度（使用功能耦合度）。刺猬在节前和节日阶段表现出明显的行为差异。我们发现有证据支持高度个性化的策略，这些策略在空间和时间上对干扰的规避方式各不相同。对个体动物的反应进行平均或仅检查一个行为参数会掩盖这些潜在的不同个体应对策略。通过使用不同的微创生物记录器类型进行有意义的组合，我们能够证明城市刺猬在应对人为干扰时存在高度的个体行为差异，这可能是在城市环境中成功生存的一个先决条件。
