Bird tolerance to humans in open tropical ecosystems
Abstract
Animal tolerance towards humans can be a key factor facilitating wildlife–human coexistence, yet traits predicting its direction and magnitude across tropical animals are poorly known. Using 10,249 observations for 842 bird species inhabiting open tropical ecosystems in Africa, South America, and Australia, we find that avian tolerance towards humans was lower (i.e., escape distance was longer) in rural rather than urban populations and in populations exposed to lower human disturbance (measured as human footprint index). In addition, larger species and species with larger clutches and enhanced flight ability are less tolerant to human approaches and escape distances increase when birds were approached during the wet season compared to the dry season and from longer starting distances. Identification of key factors affecting animal tolerance towards humans across large spatial and taxonomic scales may help us to better understand and predict the patterns of species distributions in the Anthropocene.
Citation
Mikula , P , Tomášek , O , Romportl , D , Aikins , T K , Avendaño , J E , Braimoh-Azaki , B D A , Chaskda , A , Cresswell , W , Cunningham , S J , Dale , S , Favoretto , G R , Floyd , K S , Glover , H , Grim , T , Henry , D A W , Holmern , T , Hromada , M , Iwajomo , S B , Lilleyman , A , Magige , F J , Martin , R O , de A. Maximiano , M F , Nana , E D , Ncube , E , Ndaimani , H , Nelson , E , van Niekerk , J H , Pienaar , C , Piratelli , A J , Pistorius , P , Radkovic , A , Reynolds , C , Røskaft , E , Shanungu , G K , Siqueira , P R , Tarakini , T , Tejeiro-Mahecha , N , Thompson , M L , Wamiti , W , Wilson , M , Tye , D R C , Tye , N D , Vehtari , A , Tryjanowski , P , Weston , M A , Blumstein , D T & Albrecht , T 2023 , ' Bird tolerance to humans in open tropical ecosystems ' , Nature Communications , vol. 14 , 2146 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37936-5
Publication
Nature Communications
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2041-1723Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
Funding: This study was financially supported by the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town (grant to S.J.C.), The Leventis Foundation through the A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute, Jos Nigeria (grant to B.D.A.B.), by a fellowship of the Fulbright (Slovakia) programme to P.M. for a visit to the University of California, Los Angeles.Collections
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