Behavioral Response of Bean Goose (Anser fabalis) to Simulated Ship Noises at Lake.

Sujuan Wang,Wenbin Xu,Bo Jiang,Jinzhou Cai,Lizhi Zhou

doi:10.3390/ani12040465

Abstract

Simple SummaryEnvironmental noise influences the behavioral patterns of animals. However, few quantitative studies have evaluated the effects of ship noise on wintering waterbirds in lakes. In this study, the effects of ship noise simulated by noise playback at different intensities and interference distances on the behaviors of the bean goose, a wintering waterbird species, were evaluated. Sensitivity to noise was higher in small populations than in large populations. Noises of >70 dB at distances of <100 m and >80 dB at <200 m clearly altered the flight patterns of bean geese. This study provides insight into the tolerance of endangered and protected waterbirds to environmental noise and may guide the development of strategies to minimize the impact of ship noise.Wild animals are vulnerable to environmental noise. In wetlands, wintering waterbirds are easily disturbed by ship noises; however, the behavioral changes of waterbirds in response to different levels of noise are unclear. We simulated the acoustic environment created by ship movement to investigate the effects of ship noise on foraging, vigilance, and flight behaviors of the wintering bean goose (Anser fabalis). In particular, we used a noise playback method to simulate the acoustic environment created by ship operations at various noise levels (i.e., background noise <50 dB, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 dB), distances from the noise (i.e., short <100 m, medium 100–200 m, and long distances 200–300 m), and noise duration (i.e., short 0–1 min, medium 2–3 min, and long 4–5 min). Results indicated that the noise intensity and interference distance had obvious influence on the bean geese behavior, but the noise duration had no effect. Smaller populations (N ≤ 30) were more sensitive to noise interference. As the noise level increased, the frequency of foraging behavior decreased and the frequencies of vigilance and flight behaviors increased, particularly above 70 dB. For noises >70 dB at short disturbance distances and >80 dB at medium disturbance distances, flight behavior increased significantly. These findings suggested that ships should keep a distance of more than 200 m from waterbirds to reduce noise interference.

Highlights

Noise is a very common form of disturbance with harmful effects on many species, e.g., causes stress responses of animal behaviors [1,2], reducing foraging efficiency, and social communication [3,4]
We focused on its behavioral responses to ship noise with the hope of providing a scientific basis for shipping management
We found if therefrom was December no human 9disturbance, the foraging tivity areas of bean geese were first generally identifiedbegan and the main behaviors the winterand resting behavior of bean geese in the morning andduring continued into the ing period observed

Summary

Introduction

Noise is a very common form of disturbance with harmful effects on many species, e.g., causes stress responses of animal behaviors [1,2], reducing foraging efficiency, and social communication [3,4]. In response to simulated traffic noise, when at 80 dB, the thrushes (Garrulax canorus) showed obvious retreat behavior, gradually distributed to the region with low noise intensity [11]. Most of these studies have been conducted in laboratories with caged birds, this approach may ignore important ecological factors and thereby the results may not be generalizable to field conditions. Highway noise causes avoidance behavior of black-necked cranes, and the average avoidance distance is about

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