Abstract
Flight initiation distance (FID), a measure of an animal’s tolerance to human disturbance and a descriptor of its fear of humans, is increasingly employed for conservation purposes and to predict the response of species to urbanization. However, most work devoted to understanding variability in FID has been conducted at the population level and little is still known about inter-individual variability in this behaviour. We estimated the heritability of FID, a factor fundamental to understanding the strength and evolutionary consequences of selection of particular phenotypes associated with human disturbances. We used a population of burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia) monitored long-term and for which FID was previously shown to be highly consistent across an individual’s lifespan. Heritability estimates varied between 0.37 and 0.80, depending on the habitat considered (urban-rural) and method used (parent-offspring regressions or animal models). These values are unusually high compared with those previously reported for other behavioural traits. Although more research is needed to fully understand the underlying causes of this resemblance between relatives, selection pressures acting on this behaviour should be seriously considered as an important evolutionary force in animal populations increasingly exposed to human disturbance worldwide.
Highlights
Parent-offspring h2 SE n z P father-offspring† h2 SE n z P mother-offspring† h2 SE n z P z P
Heritability of FID using this method, which accounts for the significant lower FID of urban individuals (β=−0.42; 95% credible interval (CI): −0.45–−0.39) and the larger FID of females (β= 0.06; 95% CI: 0.03–0.08), was 0.43
We assessed whether FID, a behaviour widely used to measure anti-predator responses and fear of humans in birds[4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] and shown to be highly repeatable along an individual’s adulthood in our study species[6], has a heritable component
Summary
Parent-offspring h2 SE n z P father-offspring† h2 SE n z P mother-offspring† h2 SE n z P z P. remote places free of terrestrial predators, so they typically exhibit no instinctual fear of humans in their breeding colonies[9]. We estimated the heritability of FID in the burrowing owl in two adjacent habitats (urban and rural) differing in their degree of human disturbance. Our results are the first to show that fear of humans, as measured by FID, is heritable in birds. More research is needed to fully understand the underlying causes of this resemblance between relatives, selection pressures acting on this behaviour should be seriously considered as an important evolutionary force for an increasing number of animal populations exposed to human disturbance
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