Songbirds alter their tunes in different ways to cope with noise pollution
Washington, May 22 ANI: A new study has found that some birds that live near noisy sites can alter their songs to deal with din but closely related species with similar songs may tweak their tunes in different ways. The study is part of a growing field that looks at noise pollution and its effects on wildlife. Honking horns, blaring sirens, and roaring machinery are particularly problematic for birds, said Clinton Francis of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC, who led the study. o find out which species will be most threatened by an increasingly noisy world and whether closely related species respond similarly to noise, Francis and his colleagues surveyed two closely related species with similar songs -the grey vireo and the plumbeous vireo - both living near natural gas extraction sites in the Bureau of Land Management's Rattlesnake Canyon Wildlife Area in northern New Mexico. The results showed the two species are just as common in noisy sites as quiet ones, but they alter their songs in different ways. "Plumbeous vireos raised the pitch of the lowest part of their song, while grey vireos raised the pitch of the highest part of their song," said Francis. Singing higher-pitched songs may make them easier to hear above the low frequencies typical of human-made noise, he added. Both birds also changed the length of their songs, but in opposite ways. The study has been published in Biology Letters. ANI
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