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Road exposure and the detectability of birds in field surveys

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Cooke_2020_IJoAs_Road_exposure_CC.pdf (1.037Mb)
Date
07/2020
Author
Cooke, Sophia C.
Balmford, Andrew
Johnston, Alison
Massimino, Dario
Newson, Stuart E.
Donald, Paul F.
Keywords
Anthropogenic noise
Birds
Breeding Bird Survey
Monitoring
Road ecology
GE Environmental Sciences
QH301 Biology
NDAS
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Abstract
Road ecology, the study of the impacts of roads and their traffic on wildlife, including birds, is a rapidly growing field, with research showing effects on local avian population densities up to several kilometres from a road. However, in most studies, the effects of roads on the detectability of birds by surveyors are not accounted for. This could be a significant source of error in estimates of the impacts of roads on birds and could also affect other studies of bird populations. Using road density, traffic volume and bird count data from across Great Britain, we assess the relationships between roads and detectability of a range of bird species. Of 51 species analysed, the detectability of 36 was significantly associated with road exposure, in most cases inversely. Across the range of road exposure recorded for each species, the mean positive change in detectability was 52% and the mean negative change was 36%, with the strongest negative associations found in smaller-bodied species and those for which aural cues are more important in detection. These associations between road exposure and detectability could be caused by a reduction in surveyors' abilities to hear birds or by changes in birds' behaviour, making them harder or easier to detect. We suggest that future studies of the impacts of roads on populations of birds or other taxa, and other studies using survey data from road-exposed areas, should account for the potential impacts of roads on detectability.
Citation
Cooke , S C , Balmford , A , Johnston , A , Massimino , D , Newson , S E & Donald , P F 2020 , ' Road exposure and the detectability of birds in field surveys ' , Ibis , vol. 162 , no. 3 , pp. 885-901 . https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.12787
Publication
Ibis
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.12787
ISSN
0019-1019
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Ibis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ornithologists’ Union. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
Funding: Natural Environment Research Council. Grant Number: RG81247.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/am-pdf/10.1111/ibi.12787
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/24411

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