What is it about?
Playback experiments were used to determine whether exposure to road traffic noise altered the activity, feeding and vigilance of wild prairie dogs. Road noise was recorded along Interstate 25 and played back at authentic sound levels (77 dBA @ 10m) for 1 hour treatment periods. These treatment periods were paired with 1 hour control periods (no noise exposure). Behavioural scans confirmed that in the presence of noise, aboveground activity and feeding declined, while vigilance increased.
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Why is it important?
Our paper provides the first experimental evidence that road traffic noise alters the behaviour of a free-ranging mammal. These findings highlight that the presence of animals in a location is no guarantee of population and ecological integrity. Furthermore, prairie dogs are generally considered relatively tolerant of non-lethal disturbance, but our study demonstrates a clear behavioural shift. Our results therefore have implications for this keystone species and more risk sensitive taxa.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Road traffic noise modifies behaviour of a keystone species, Animal Behaviour, August 2014, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.06.004.
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Resources
LiveScience article
Article describing our research on exploring the effects of road traffic noise on prairie dog behaviour.
Supplementary material
Table S1: AICc scores comparing autocorrelation structure for the three response variables. Table S2: The observed (β estimate ± 95% CI) relationship between each of the response variables and the received noise level parameter (model-averaged). Figure S1. One-third octave band mean and percentile sound pressure levels of traffic noise used in playback experiments (68 min of recording). Broadband sound pressure levels in dBA, dBC and dBZ are also included.
Details of current research
Background to research that I am conducting at Colorado State University.
Contributors
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