Westover Lucy, Morris-Drake Amy, Layton Megan, Kern Julie M, Arbon Josh J, Radford Andrew N
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, 24 Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK.
Biol Lett. 2025 Feb;21(2):20240645. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0645. Epub 2025 Feb 12.
Anthropogenic noise is a pervasive pollutant in the world's ecosystems, with numerous studies demonstrating negative physiological, developmental and behavioural impacts across taxa. However, research has tended to focus on anthropogenic noise in isolation; many species often experience this pollutant in conjunction with other anthropogenic and natural stressors. Here, we used a field experiment to investigate the combined effects of a sequential elevation in perceived predation risk followed by exposure to road noise on the vigilance behaviour of dwarf mongooses (). As expected, both alarm-call playback (simulating a greater predation risk) and road-noise playback independently led to more vigilance compared to close-call and ambient-sound (control) playbacks, respectively. The two stressors had an equivalent effect on total vigilance, lending support to the risk-disturbance hypothesis. The combination of the two stressors did not, however, generate a significantly different amount of vigilance compared to road-noise playback alone. Thus, our experiment provides further evidence that anthropogenic noise can influence the vigilance-foraging trade-off but no indication of an additive or synergistic effect when combined with the natural stressor of elevated predation risk. Further investigation of combined-stressor effects is critical if we are to understand the true impacts of anthropogenic disturbances on species and communities.
人为噪声是世界生态系统中一种普遍存在的污染物，众多研究表明其对各分类群具有负面的生理、发育和行为影响。然而，研究往往孤立地关注人为噪声；许多物种经常同时受到这种污染物以及其他人为和自然压力源的影响。在此，我们通过一项野外实验，研究了先感知到捕食风险增加，随后暴露于道路噪声这两种情况对矮獴警惕行为的综合影响。正如预期的那样，与近距离呼叫和环境声音（对照）回放相比，警报声回放（模拟更高的捕食风险）和道路噪声回放分别独立导致了更多的警惕行为。这两种压力源对总警惕行为的影响相当，这支持了风险干扰假说。然而，与单独的道路噪声回放相比，这两种压力源的组合并未产生显著不同的警惕行为量。因此，我们的实验进一步证明人为噪声会影响警惕 - 觅食权衡，但没有表明与捕食风险增加这一自然压力源结合时存在累加或协同效应。如果我们要了解人为干扰对物种和群落的真正影响，进一步研究复合压力源效应至关重要。
