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Anthropogenic disturbance of wildlife is increasing globally. Generalizing impacts of disturbance to novel situations is challenging, as the tolerance of animals to human activities varies with disturbance frequency (e.g. due to habituation). Few studies have quantified frequency-dependent tolerance, let alone determined how it affects predictions of disturbance impacts when these are extrapolated over large areas. In a comparative study across a gradient of air traffic intensities, we show that birds nearly always fled (80%) if aircraft were rare, while birds rarely responded (7%) if traffic was frequent. When extrapolating site-specific responses to an entire region, accounting for frequency-dependent tolerance dramatically alters the predicted costs of disturbance: the disturbance map homogenizes with fewer hotspots. Quantifying frequency-dependent tolerance has proven challenging, but we propose that (i) ignoring it causes extrapolations of disturbance impacts from single sites to be unreliable, and (ii) it can reconcile published idiosyncratic species- or source-specific disturbance responses.

Anthropogenic disturbance of wildlife is increasing globally. Generalizing impacts of disturbance to novel situations is challenging, as the tolerance of animals to human activities varies with disturbance frequency (e.g. due to habituation). Few studies have quantified frequency-dependent tolerance, let alone determined how it affects predictions of disturbance impacts when these are extrapolated over large areas. In a comparative study across a gradient of air traffic intensities, we show that birds nearly always fled (80%) if aircraft were rare, while birds rarely responded (7%) if traffic was frequent. When extrapolating site-specific responses to an entire region, accounting for frequency-dependent tolerance dramatically alters the predicted costs of disturbance: the disturbance map homogenizes with fewer hotspots. Quantifying frequency-dependent tolerance has proven challenging, but we propose that (i) ignoring it causes extrapolations of disturbance impacts from single sites to be unreliable, and (ii) it can reconcile published idiosyncratic species- or source-specific disturbance responses.

25 februari 2022, Item does not contain fulltext

Contains fulltext : 248668.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

25 februari 2022, Contains fulltext : 250798.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

Disturbance may impact individual birds and ultimately bird populations. If animals avoid disturbed sites this may prevent them from being disturbed directly but may also negatively impact their movement patterns and energy budgets. Avoidance is, however, challenging to study, because it requires following individuals over large spatial scales in order to compare their movement rates between sites in relation to spatiotemporal variation in disturbance intensity. We studied how 48 GPS-tracked non-breeding Eurasian Oystercatchers Haematopus ostralegus used two neighbouring roost sites in the Wadden Sea. One roost site is highly influenced by seasonal recreational disturbance whereas the other is an undisturbed sandbar. We analysed roost choice and the probability of moving away from the disturbed roost site with regard to a seasonal recreation activity index, weekends and night-time. Oystercatchers often chose to roost on the undisturbed site, even if they were foraging closer to the disturbed roost. The probability that Oystercatchers chose to roost on the disturbed site was negatively correlated with the recreation activity index and was lowest in the tourist season (summer and early autumn), indicating that birds used the site less often when recreation levels were high. Furthermore, the probability that birds moved away from the disturbed site during high tide was positively correlated with the recreation activity index. The choice to roost on the undisturbed site implies that birds must fly an additional 8 km during one high-tide period, which equates to 3.4% of daily energy expenditure of an average Oystercatcher. Our study tentatively suggests that the costs of avoidance may outweigh the energetic cost of direct flight responses and hence that avoidance of disturbed sites requires more attention in future disturbance impact studies. Nature managers should evaluate whether high-quality undisturbed roosting sites are available near foraging sites, and in our c

We describe six datasets that contain GPS and accelerometer data of 202 Eurasian oystercatchers (Haema-topus ostralegus) spanning the period 2008–2021. Birds were equipped with GPS trackers in breeding and wintering areas in the Netherlands and Belgium. We used GPS trackers from the University of Amsterdam Bird Tracking System (UvA-BiTS) for several study purposes, including the study of space use during the breeding season, habitat use and foraging behaviour in the winter season, and impacts of human distur-bance. To enable broader usage, all data have now been made open access. Combined, the datasets contain 6.0 million GPS positions, 164 million acceleration measurements and 7.0 million classified behaviour events (i.e., flying, walking, foraging, preening, and inactive). The datasets are deposited on the research repository Zenodo, but are also accessible on Movebank and as down-sampled occurrence datasets on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS).

To understand the consequences of anthropogenic and environmental changes for wildlife populations, it is important to study how individuals differ in their sensitivity to environmental change and whether this depends on individual characteristics. An individual's reproductive performance may provide an integrative, unidimensional proxy of an individual's characteristics. In this study, we define an individual's characteristics by three such reproductive states, namely successful, failed and non-breeders in the previous year. We used a 16-year dataset of individually marked breeding Eurasian Oystercatchers Haematopus ostralegus to examine the interannual fluctuations in reproductive success and survival among breeding states, and their state-dependent sensitivity to environmental conditions. Environmental conditions included available biomass of the main prey species of breeding Oystercatchers (Ragworm, Baltic Tellin and Lugworm), tidal height, which reflects one of the main causes of nest loss (flooding), and conditions that may impact the energetic requirements during incubation, such as temperature. We also included environmental variables measured in winter, including available biomass of the main winter prey species (Blue Mussel and Common Cockle) along with factors that may affect food availability and energetic requirements for homeostasis, namely bivalve weight loss, windchill, winter severity and precipitation. Breeding birds that were successful the previous year had higher survival and were more likely to remain successful, in comparison with failed or non-breeders. The effects of environmental conditions acted in the same direction on reproductive success but had opposite effects on survival among the three breeding states, especially for windchill and Blue Mussel biomass. The contrasting state-dependent effects of the environment on survival thus averaged out when examining consequences for lifetime reproductive nest success (LRnS); instead, LRnS was

We describe six datasets that contain GPS and accelerometer data of 202 Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus) spanning the period 2008–2021. Birds were equipped with GPS trackers in breeding and wintering areas in the Netherlands and Belgium. We used GPS trackers from the University of AmsterdamBird Tracking System (UvA-BiTS) for several study purposes, including the study of space use during the breeding season, habitat use and foraging behaviour in the winter season, and impacts of human disturbance. To enable broader usage, all data have now been made open access. Combined, the datasets contain 6.0 million GPS positions, 164 million acceleration measurements and 7.0 million classified behaviour events (i.e., flying, walking, foraging, preening, and inactive). The datasets are deposited on the research repository Zenodo, but are also accessible on Movebank and as down-sampled occurrence datasets on theGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS).

O_BALGZAND - Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus, Haematopodidae) wintering on Balgzand (the Netherlands) is a bird tracking dataset published by Sovon, the University of Amsterdam and the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). It contains animal tracking data collected during CHIRP (Cumulative Human Impact on biRd Populations) for the study O_BALGZAND using trackers developed by the University of Amsterdam Bird Tracking System (UvA-BiTS, http://www.uva-bits.nl). The study was operational from 2010 to 2014. In total 22 individuals of Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus) have been tagged while overwintering in the Balgzand area in the Western Wadden Sea (the Netherlands), mainly to study how they utilize intertidal flats in relation to food availability in winter., O_BALGZAND - Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus, Haematopodidae) wintering on Balgzand (the Netherlands) is a bird tracking dataset published by Sovon, the University of Amsterdam and the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). It contains animal tracking data collected during CHIRP (Cumulative Human Impact on biRd Populations) for the study O_BALGZAND using trackers developed by the University of Amsterdam Bird Tracking System (UvA-BiTS, http://www.uva-bits.nl). The study has been operational from 2010 to 2014. In total 22 individuals of Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus) have been tagged while overwintering in the Balgzand area in the Western Wadden Sea (the Netherlands), mainly to study how they utilize intertidal flats in relation to food availability in winter. Data are uploaded from the UvA-BiTS database to Movebank and from there archived on Zenodo (see https://github.com/inbo/bird-tracking). No new data are expected. Data in this package are exported from Movebank study O_BALGZAND - Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus, Haematopodidae) wintering on Balgzand (the Netherlands) (Movebank Study ID 1605798640), which can be viewed at https://www.movebank.org/cms/webapp?gwt_fragment=page=studies,path=study1605798640. Fields in the data follow the Movebank Attribute Dictionary (http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/MVB) and are described in datapackage.json. Files Files are structured as a Frictionless Data Package. You can access all data in R via https://zenodo.org/record/5653442/files/datapackage.json using frictionless. datapackage.json: technical description of the data files. O_BALGZAND-reference-data.csv: reference data about the animals, tags and deployments. O_BALGZAND-gps-yyyy.csv.gz: GPS data recorded by the tags, grouped by year. O_BALGZAND-acceleration-yyyy.csv.gztr