Artigo biologia do comportamento

Journal of Applied
Ecology 2005
42, 943–953

Inter-specific variation in avian responses to human disturbance Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.

DANIEL T. BLUMSTEIN,* ESTEBAN FERNÁNDEZ-JURICIC,†
PATRICK A. ZOLLNER‡ and SUSAN C. GARITY*
*Department of Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology, 621 Charles E. Young Drive South, University of California,
Los Angeles, CA 90095–1606, USA; †Department of Biological Sciences, California State University Long Beach,
Peterson Hall 1–109, 1250 Bellflower Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA; and ‡USDA Forest Service North Central
Research Station, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, 5985 Hwy K, Rhinelander, WI 54501, USA

Summary
1. Increasing urbanization and recreational activities around and within biodiversity hotspots require an understanding of how to reduce the impacts of human disturbance on more than a single species; however, we lack a general framework to study multiple species. One approach is to expand on knowledge about the theory of anti-predator behaviour to understand and predict how different species might respond to humans.
2. We reviewed the literature and found that only 21% of studies that used a behavioural approach to study human disturbance focused on multiple species. These studies identified a number of potential predictive variables.
3. We developed a simulation model that investigates interspecific variation in different parameters of disturbance with variation in human visitation. We found that fitness-related responses, such as the quantity of food consumed by a species, are relatively sensitive to the distance at which animals detect humans, the frequency of disturbance by humans and the interaction of these factors, but are less sensitive to other characteristics.
4. We examined avian alert distance (the distance animals first orientated to an approaching threat, a proxy for detection distance) across 150 species, controlling for phylogenetic effects.
We found that larger species had greater