Monitoring human disturbance: Factors affecting escape behaviour of waterbirds in North African wetlands
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Date
2021-11-25
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onlinelibrary.wiley
Abstract
Understanding the factors affecting escape behaviour in waterbirds can be useful in
the management of human disturbances. A common measure of escape response is
flight initiation distance (FID), the distance at which an approaching intruder disturbs
an individual bird enough to make it move away. Here, we analyse the escape behaviour
of a set of waterbirds for the first time within a North African context. We tested
(one-way
ANOVA and general linear model) how FID varied with the area where
waterbirds were temporal scale, distance at which the observer start approaching
to the sampled birds, body size, flock size, species composition of the flock and foraging
activity of the sampled birds. We collected 866 individual FIDs for 19 waterbird
species wintering at two north Algerian wetlands (the Mekhada marsh, RAMSAR
site, El-taref
District and the Sebkhet El-Mahmel,
unprotected wetland, Khenchela
District). The obtained FIDs ranged from 32.6 m in smaller species as the Kentish
plover Charadrius alexandrines to 167 m in larger ones as the ruddy shelduck Tadorna
ferruginea. The obtained models stated that differences in the absolute levels of FIDs
were mostly related to starting distance (Effect size = 0.62), to which is added a relatively
little effect of wetland status, taxonomic differences, temporal scale, body size,
flock size, species composition of the flock and bird activity. More specifically, FID
was lower in smaller and homospecific groups at early winter in the protected wetland.
Reserve managers in North Africa could use species and context-specific
FIDs
in delineating appropriate buffer areas and in the design of management initiatives
aimed at minimising eventual potential threat due to human disturbance and guaranteeing
animal welfare and wildlife.