Abstract
The development of urban areas imposes challenges that wildlife must adapt to in order to persist in these new habitats. One of the greatest changes brought by urbanization has been an increase in anthropogenic noise, with negative consequences for the natural behavior of animals. Small mammals are particularly vulnerable to urbanization and noise, despite some species having successfully occupied urban environments. To understand some of the traits that have enabled small mammals to deal with the consequences of urbanization, we compared the behavioral responses of urban and rural greater white-toothed shrews, Crocidura russula, to different sound stimuli. A total of 32 shrews, 16 from each habitat, were exposed in captivity to four sound treatments: silence, tawny owl calls, traffic noise, and white noise. Urban and rural shrews showed different behaviors, with urban animals being more active, feeding more frequently, and using less torpor than rural individuals. However, responses to sound treatments were similar in both populations: urban and rural shrews exhibited a slight decrease in activity and feeding behavior, as well as more fleeing responses, when exposed to traffic noise or white noise, but not to owl calls. These results suggest urbanization induces long-term changes in the general activity of C. russula, but the short-term behavioral response to sound disturbance remains similar in rural and urban populations.
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Acknowledgements
We thank users “sean.townsend”, “YleArkisto” and “Benboncan” for allowing us to freely download tawny owl calls and users “Robinhood76” and “C klankbeeld 2014” for allowing us to freely download traffic noise recordings from the freesound.org website. Some tawny owl calls were also kindly provided by Dr. Tomi Trilar from the Slovenian Museum of Natural History. We thank Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (CML), Museu de Lisboa, and Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa for permission to trap shrews in their green spaces, and Parques de Sintra – Monte da Lua, namely Inês Moreira, for permission to trap shrews in Sintra. We thank the valuable help of field assistants, namely: Ana Cerveira, Ana Filipa Durão, Daniel Mameri, Diogo Barros, Fernando Madeira, Inês Fontes, João Gameiro, Pedro David, Rita Andrade, Sara Oliveira, Telma Laurentino, Tiago Maçarico and Welvis Fernandes.
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Thanks are due to FCT/MCTES for the financial support to CESAM (UIDP/50017/2020 + UIDB/50017/2020), through national funds. This work was supported through a PhD grant (ref: PD/BD/109400/2015) granted to FGO and financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
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Conceptualization: Flávio G. Oliveira, Joaquim T. Tapisso and Maria da Luz Mathias; Methodology and resources: Flávio G. Oliveira, Joaquim T. Tapisso and Paulo J. Fonseca; Investigation and formal analysis: Flávio G. Oliveira; Writing – original draft: Flávio G. Oliveira and Paulo J. Fonseca; Writing – review and editing: Joaquim T. Tapisso, Sophie von Merten, Leszek Rychlik and Maria L. Mathias; Supervision: Joaquim T. Tapisso, Leszek Rychlik and Maria da Luz Mathias; Funding acquisition: Maria da Luz Mathias.
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The handling, capture and transportation of shrews were authorized by Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e Florestas (ICNF, license number 37/2016/CAPT). Maintenance and testing procedures were stated by a competent authority (ORBEA 3/2017) to be in accordance with the requirements following the European guidelines (Directive 2010/63/EU) transposed to Portuguese law (decree-law number 113/2013). Shrews were cared for in accordance with the Animal Behavior guidelines for the treatment of animals in behavioral research and teaching (ASAB/ABS 2018). Disturbance to captive animals was minimized by avoiding handling between tests and only checking shrews once every day when food and water were replenished. No animals died or showed evident signs of distress during or following a trial. After approximately three weeks, captive shrews were released at their original trapping site.
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Oliveira, F.G., Tapisso, J.T., von Merten, S. et al. Behavioral responses of rural and urban greater white-toothed shrews (Crocidura russula) to sound disturbance. Urban Ecosyst 24, 851–862 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01079-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01079-y