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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on August 25, 2008
Behavioral Ecology 2008 19(6):1095-1102; doi:10.1093/beheco/arn103
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Flight distance and population trends in European breeding birds

Anders Pape Møllera,b

a CNRS, UMR 7103, Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bât. A, 7ème étage, 7 quai St Bernard, Case 237, F-75252 Paris, Cedex 05, France b UMPC Paris 06, UMR 7103, Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bât. A, 7ème étage, 7 quai St Bernard, Case 237, F-75252 Paris, Cedex 05, France

Address correspondence to A.P. Møller. E-mail: amoller{at}snv.jussieu.fr.


  Abstract

Flight distance reflects the risk that individual animals are willing to take when approached by a potential predator, as shown by a negative relationship between susceptibility to predation and flight distance. Species with long flight distances should more often suffer from disruption of their activities by potential predators, including humans, than species with short distances, resulting in declining reproductive success and hence declining population size of such species if disturbance happens more often. Long flight distances thus suggest that individuals need large amounts of space for their body size, resulting in the prediction that species with long flight distances should have a higher frequency of declining populations than species with short flight distances, when human impact on natural habitats increases. Bird species with long flight distances had declining population trends across Europe in a comparative study of 56 species, even when controlling statistically for other factors associated with population declines, with effect sizes ranging from 0.36 to 0.58 (Pearson's r). These findings suggest that standardized measures of flight distance provide reliable information about the population consequences of risk-taking behavior by individuals and the susceptibility of different species to increased levels of disturbance.

Key words: bird census, birds, population consequences, risk taking.

Received 24 January 2008; revised 30 June 2008; accepted 1 July 2008.


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