Abstract
Noise is one of a wide range of disturbances associated with human activities that have been shown to have detrimental impacts on a wide range of species, from montane regions to the deep marine environment. Noise may also have community-level impacts via predator–prey interactions, thus jeopardising the stability of trophic networks. However, the impact of noise on freshwater ecosystems is largely unknown. Even more so is the case of insects, despite their crucial role in trophic networks. Here, we study the impact of underwater noise on the predatory functional response of damselfly larvae. We compared the feeding rates of larvae under anthropogenic noise, natural noise, and silent conditions. Our results suggest that underwater noise (pooling the effects of anthropogenic noise and natural noise) decreases the feeding rate of damselflies significantly compared to relatively silent conditions. In particular, natural noise increased the handling time significantly compared to the silent treatment, thus reducing the feeding rate. Unexpectedly, feeding rates under anthropogenic noise were not reduced significantly compared to silent conditions. This study suggests that noise per se may not necessarily have negative impacts on trophic interactions. Instead, the impact of noise on feeding rates may be explained by the presence of nonlinearities in acoustic signals, which may be more abundant in natural compared to anthropogenic noise. We conclude by highlighting the importance of studying a diversity of types of acoustic pollution, and encourage further work regarding trophic interactions with insects using a functional response approach.
Highlights
Human activities have exerted sub stantial pressures on a wide range of ecosystems, from montane regions to the deep marine environment
We performed two separate analyses: first, we tested the differences in the attack rates and the handling times with and without acoustic stimuli by pooling the data from the anthropogenic noise and natural noise treatments and compared the coefficients against the control treatment
The results from this study suggest that, in general, the presence of acoustic stimuli decreased the number of prey eaten compared to silent conditions even at high prey densities
Summary
Human activities have exerted sub stantial pressures on a wide range of ecosystems, from montane regions to the deep marine environment. Many such impacts have been categorised, evaluated, and quantified in great detail (Sala et al 2000). Other stressors do not offer such clear records of their impacts on the environment. This is the case of noise pollution. While some research into the impacts of noise on animals has achieved a high profile, research carried out on cetaceans (Weilgart 2007) and in urban birds (Slabbekoorn and Peet 2003), research is only just beginning to explore the wider impacts on ecosystems. Even though some species have developed mechanisms to cope with noise disturbance (Fuller et al 2007; Halfwerk and Slabbekoorn 2009; Parris et al 2009), the potential of
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