摘要
Urbanization involves dramatic environmental alterations, which can limit survival and reproduction of organisms and contribute to loss of biodiversity. One such alteration is anthropogenic noise, which biases natural ambient noise spectra toward low frequencies where it may interfere with acoustic communication among birds. Because vocalizing at higher frequencies could prevent masking by noise, it has been hypothesized that species with higher song frequencies should be less affected by urbanization. Indeed, evidence is accumulating that urban birds often vocalize at higher frequency than nonurban birds. However, the extent to which singing frequency affects their success in cities is less clear. We tested this hypothesis with a comprehensive phylogenetic Bayesian analysis comparing song frequency of songbirds from 5 continents with 4 measures of success in urbanized environments. Tolerance to urbanization was not associated with dominant or minimum song frequencies, regardless of the metric used to quantify urban success and the intensity of the urban alterations. Although song frequency was related to habitat preferences and body size of the species, none of these factors explained the lack of association with urban success. Singing high may be beneficial for signal perception under noisy conditions, but these high frequencies are apparently no guarantee for the success of bird species in urbanized environments.
摘要译文
城市化涉及巨大的环境变化，这可能会限制生物的生存和繁殖，并有助于丧失生物多样性。一个这样的改变是人为的噪音，其将自然环境噪声谱偏向低频，其可能干扰鸟之间的声学通信。因为在较高频率下的发声可以防止噪声掩蔽，所以假设具有更高歌曲频率的物种应该受城市化的影响较小。确实，证据正在积累，城市鸟类的频率高于非鸟类鸟类。然而，唱歌频率在多大程度上影响他们在城市的成功却不太清楚。我们用全面的系统发育贝叶斯分析比较了来自5大洲的鸣鸟的频率，并在城市化环境中获得了4项成功的测试。城市化的宽容度与主要或最低歌曲频率无关，无论用于量化城市成功的度量和城市变化的强度。虽然歌曲频率与物种的栖息地偏好和体型有关，但这些因素都没有解释为与城市成功缺乏联系。唱歌高可能有利于嘈杂条件下的信号感知，但这些高频显然不能保证鸟类在城市化环境中的成功。
Maria Moiron[1];Cesar González-Lagos[2];Hans Slabbekoorn[3];Daniel Sol[1]. Singing in the city: high song frequencies are no guarantee for urban success in birds[J]. Behavioral Ecology, 2015,26(3): 843-850