Physiological Response and Habituation of Endangered Species to Military Training Activities
Abstract
Organisms must respond to unpredictable, novel, and/or dangerous conditions in their environment to maintain homeostasis and optimize fitness. We evaluated physiological response in free-living endangered and common passerine species to human disturbance indicated by endocrine stress response as measured by plasma corticosterone and energy expenditure as measured by telemetered heart-rate. We conducted a series of experiments on endangered blackcapped vireos and golden-cheeked warblers and non-endangered white-eyed vireos on Fort Hood, Texas to evaluate chronic and acute response to human disturbance trials. Overall, we found only weak and mixed evidence that physiological response measures in songbird species in this study are acutely or chronically sensitive to human activity at exposure levels in this study, although adults exhibited strong behavioral responses. We did find a decline in baseline corticosterone in the habitat specialist golden-cheeked warblers in habitats with high road densities that we did not observed in habitat generalist white-eyed vireos. Comparison of our results with studies for other non-passerine avian taxa suggests potential differences in disturbance response in species with significantly different life-history characteristics. This is the first study integrating these two physiological measures of response to human disturbance in free-flying passerine species and addresses key knowledge gaps in how wild animals respond and adapt to potential disturbance from human activities. This research also provided the rare opportunity to directly measure these stress responses in two federally-listed endangered avian species.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA603732
Entities
People
- Douglas Barron
- Isabelle Bisson
- L. M. Romero
- Luke Butler
- Martin Wikelski
- Paul Kelley
- Timothy J. Hayden
Organizations
- Engineer Research and Development Center