Anthropogenic noise impairs foraging for cryptic prey via cross-sensory interference

Anthropogenic noise levels are globally rising with profound impacts on ecosystems and the species that live in them. Masking or distraction by noise can interfere with relevant sounds and thereby impact ecological interactions between individuals of the same or different species.  Predator-prey dynamics are particularly likely to be influenced by rising noise levels, with important population- and community-level consequences, as species may differentially adapt to noise disturbance. Acoustic noise can, however, also impair the use of visual information by animals through the process of cross-sensory interference, possibly impacting species interactions that have so far been largely ignored by noise impact studies. Here we assessed how noise affected the performance of Great tit (Parus major) foraging on cryptic prey. Birds trained individually to search for paper moths differing in the level of camouflage with the test background were tested in the presence and absence of noise. We fo...人为噪声（anthropogenic noise）水平在全球范围内持续攀升，对生态系统及其栖息物种造成了深远影响。噪声引发的掩蔽效应或注意力分散，会干扰动物对相关声学信号的接收，进而破坏同种或异种个体间的生态互动。捕食者-猎物动态（predator-prey dynamics）尤其易随噪声水平上升而发生改变，进而对种群与群落层面产生重要影响——因不同物种对噪声干扰的适应能力存在差异。然而，声学噪声还可通过跨感官干扰（cross-sensory interference）过程损害动物对视觉信息的利用，这可能干扰此前绝大多数噪声影响研究尚未关注的物种互动关系。本研究探究了噪声对大山雀（Great tit，学名Parus major）觅食隐蔽猎物时的行为表现的影响。研究人员对经单独训练、用于搜寻与实验背景伪装程度各异的纸制蛾类的个体，分别在噪声环境与无噪声环境下开展了行为测试。我们……