A Bayesian optimal escape model reveals bird species differ in their capacity to habituate to humans

Nicholas M Sutton, Michael A Weston, Patrick J Guay, Jenna Tregoweth and James P O’Dwyer

Behavioral Ecology, 2021, vol. 32, issue 6, 1064-1074

Abstract: The capacity to habituate to, or tolerate, the close proximity of humans varies among wildlife species and may mediate population and species viability. Some species readily habituate to human proximity while others remain sensitive. These differences are important for predicting human impact on wildlife, but can be difficult to quantify given wildlife responses are highly idiosyncratic and are often context dependent. A general method for assimilating multiple sources of information and variation in individual responses is needed to extract meaningful descriptors of population- and species-level behavior. We apply a previously verified Bayesian optimal escape model to quantify differences in the perceived risk of seven species of waterbird, and generate a metric for species-specific sensitivity by estimating the relative change in risk perception of each species across an environmental gradient from low to high prevailing human activity level. We found that, in general, birds are the least habituated (evidently perceived the highest level of risk from humans) in sites with low human activity and the most habituated (evidently perceived lower levels of risk from humans) in sites with high human activity. Species varied in the degree of these differences, with some insensitive to human activity level, while others were highly sensitive. Aside from improving our ability to study the habituation of wild populations, this method for quantifying risk perception at population and species scales has broad applications in the management and monitoring of wildlife, and may aid in environmental impact assessments and identifying populations/species susceptible to disturbance.

Keywords: Bayesian modeling; decision making; disturbance tolerance; habituation; human–wildlife interactions; optimal escape theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arab033 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:32:y:2021:i:6:p:1064-1074.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().