Anthropogenic noise affects risk assessment and attention: the distracted prey hypothesis

Biology Letters - Tập 6 Số 4 - Trang 458-461 - 2010
Alvin Aaden Yim-Hol Chan1, Paulina Giraldo-Perez1, Sonja M. Smith1, Daniel T. Blumstein1
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 621 Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA

Tóm tắt

Many studies have focused on the effects of anthropogenic noise on animal communication, but only a few have looked at its effect on other behavioural systems. We designed a playback experiment to test the effect of noise on predation risk assessment. We found that in response to boat motor playback, Caribbean hermit crabs (Coenobita clypeatus) allowed a simulated predator to approach closer before they hid. Two hypotheses may explain how boat noise affected risk assessment: it masked an approaching predator's sound; and/or it reallocated some of the crabs' finite attention, effectively distracting them, and thus preventing them from responding to an approaching threat. We found no support for the first hypothesis: a silent looming object still got closer during boat motor playbacks than during silence. However, we found support for the attentional hypothesis: when we added flashing lights to the boat motor noise to further distract the hermit crabs, we were able to approach the crabs more closely than with the noise alone. Anthropogenic sounds may thus distract prey and make them more vulnerable to predation.

Từ khóa


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Thông tin
Thông tin xuất bản

Biology Letters

Tập 6 Số 4

458-461

Thông tin tác giả