科创中国

Human activity affects the perception of risk by mule deer

原文链接：万方

• 作者：

  Mary V. PRICE,Evelyn H. STROMBOM,Daniel T. BLUMSTEIN

• 摘要：

  Human activity has been shown to influence how animals assess the risk of predation, but we know little about the spatial scale of such impacts. We quantified how vigilance and flight behavior in mule deer Odocoileus hemionus varied with distance from an area of concentrated human activity--a subalpine field station. An observer walked trails at various distances away from the station looking for deer. Upon encounter, the observer walked toward the focal animal and noted the distance at which it alerted and directed its attention to the approaching human (Alert Distance; AD), and the distance at which it fled (Flight Initiation Distance;. FID). AD and FID both increased nonlinearly with distance from the center of the field station, reaching pla- teaus around 250 m and 750 m, respectively. Deer also tended to flee by stotting or running, rather than by walking, when far from the station but they walked away when near the station. These results indicate that deer perceive lower risk near a focused area of human activity, and that vigilance and flight behaviors respond on somewhat different spatial scales. The concept of a spatial "human footprint" on behavior may be useful for understanding how human activities affect wildlife

• 关键词：

  人类活动影响 风险 鹿 空间尺度 飞行距离 野生动物 骡 距离集

• 作者单位：

  The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Crested Butte, CO 81224, USA%School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721, USA%Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA 90095-1606, USA

• 基金项目：

  Acknowledgements We thank Sara Hiebert Burch and Nick Waser for advice, Nick Waser for editing the manuscript, and four anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. Funding was provided by a Robert Enders Field Research Award from the Department of Biology, Swarthmore College (EHS), and by the NSF (DEB-1119660to DTB). Deer were studied under ARC protocols approved by UCLA and the RMBL and with permits issued by the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

• 来源期刊：

  动物学报(英文版)

• 年，卷(期)：

  2014006