Flight initiation distances of birds

Habitat destruction and fragmentation increasingly brings humans into close proximity with wildlife, particularly in urban contexts. Animals respond to humans using nuanced anti-predator responses, especially escape, with responses influenced by behavioural and life history traits, the nature of the risk, and aspects of the surrounding environment. Although many studies examine associations between broad-scale habitat characteristics (i.e., habitat type) and escape response, few investigate the influence of fine-scale aspects of the local habitat within which escape occurs. We test the ‘habitat connectivity hypothesis’ which suggests that, given the higher cost of escape within less connected habitats (due to the lack of protective cover), woodland birds should delay escape (tolerate more risk) than when in more connected habitat. We analyse flight-initiation distances (FIDs) of five species of woodland birds in urban Melbourne, south-eastern Australia. A negative effect of habitat conn..., See Radvan et al for details., The CSV file is suitable for R