[MCN] Traffic noise disrupts wild birds' warning calls to each other

[Lance Olsen]

Biology Letters Published 19 April 2016
.DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0113

When the birds go unheard: highway noise disrupts information 
transfer between bird species
Aaron M. Grade, Kathryn E. Sieving

Abstract
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/4/20160113

Highway infrastructure and accompanying vehicle noise is associated 
with decreased wildlife populations in adjacent habitats. Noise 
masking of animal communication is an oft-cited potential mechanism 
underlying species loss in sound-polluted habitats. This study 
documents the disruption of between-species information transfer by 
anthropogenic noise. Titmice and chickadees broadcast specific calls 
to alert kin of predator threats, and sympatric vertebrates eavesdrop 
on these alarm calls to avoid predators. We tested if tufted titmouse 
alarm call eavesdropping by northern cardinals is disrupted by road 
noise. We broadcast recorded alarm calls to cardinals in natural 
areas near and far from highways. Cardinals reliably produced 
predator avoidance responses in quiet trials, but all birds in noisy 
areas failed to respond, demonstrating that highway noise is loud 
enough to disrupt this type of survival-related information via 
masking or cognitive distraction. Birds in family Paridae are 
abundant, highly social and vocal residents of woodlands across the 
Holarctic whose alarm calls are used by many species to mediate 
predation risks. Our work suggests that communication network 
disruption is likely to be widespread, and could help explain the 
pattern of reduced biodiversity near roadways.

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"I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is 
not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much 
touted among adults as the thing children lack in, is not actually a 
progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living."

Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac. 1949, p.120
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