Abstract
Environmental change associated with urbanization is considered one of the major threats to biodiversity. Some species nevertheless seem to thrive in the urban areas, probably associated with selection for phenotypes that match urban habitats. Previous research defined different “copying styles” in distress behavior during the handling of birds. These behaviors vary along a continuum from “proactive” to “reactive” copers. By studying avian distress behaviors we aimed to broaden our understanding of the relationship between coping styles and urbanization. Using a large-scale comparative study of seven paired rural and urban sites across Europe, we assayed distress behaviors during handling of urban and rural-dwelling populations of the great tit Parus major. We detected no consistent pairwise differences in breath rate between urban and rural habitats. However, urban great tits displayed more distress calling (fear screams) and higher pecking rate (handling aggression) than rural birds. These findings suggest that urban great tits have a more proactive coping strategy when dealing with stressful conditions. This finding is in line with previous studies implying that urban great tits are more explorative, less neophobic and display shorter flight distances than their rural counterparts, representing further aspects of the same “proactive”, coping strategy. Future research should investigate whether reported differences in distress behavior are due to local adaption caused by natural selection or due to phenotypic plasticity.
Highlights
Urban environments are expanding worldwide with an unprecedented speed (United Nations, 2014); environmental change associated with urbanization is being considered as one of the main current threats to biodiversity (Turner et al, 2004)
We focus in this paper on three distress behaviors recorded during handling: distress calling, handling aggression, and breath rate
Repeatabilities of pecking and breath rates were of higher magnitude, and were similar between rural and urban populations (Table 2)
Summary
Urban environments are expanding worldwide with an unprecedented speed (United Nations, 2014); environmental change associated with urbanization is being considered as one of the main current threats to biodiversity (Turner et al, 2004). Urban habitats differ in many respects from rural habitats, including microclimate, food abundance, pollution, abundance of exotic species, and predation risk (Luniak and Pisarski, 1982; Marzluff et al, 2001; Gaston, 2010; Gil and Brumm, 2014) Many of these factors induce stress, defined in a broad sense as changes away from an organisms’ physiological homeostasis that emerge in response to a change in the environment (sensu Badyaev, 2005; Tuomainen and Candolin, 2012). This is especially the case for factors that represent, or are associated with increased perceived predation risk, such as elevated disturbance due to the presence of humans, pet mammals, and cars (Buchanan and Partecke, 2012). Some studies reveal higher corticosterone levels (avian stress hormones) in urban compared to rural bird populations (Schoech et al, 2007; Fokidis et al, 2009; Zhang et al, 2011), whereas other studies found the opposite pattern or no significant differences (Partecke et al, 2006; French et al, 2008; AbolinsAbols et al, 2016)
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