Villalobos-Jiménez, G orcid.org/0000-0003-3248-3644, Dunn, AM orcid.org/0000-0002-4855-1077 and Hassall, C orcid.org/0000-0002-3510-0728 (2017) Environmental noise reduces predation rate in an aquatic invertebrate. Journal of Insect Conservation, 21 (5-6). pp. 839-847. ISSN 1366-638X
Abstract
Noise is one of a wide range of disturbances associated with human activities that have been shown to have detrimental impacts on a wide range of species, from montane regions to the deep marine environment. Noise may also have community-level impacts via predator–prey interactions, thus jeopardising the stability of trophic networks. However, the impact of noise on freshwater ecosystems is largely unknown. Even more so is the case of insects, despite their crucial role in trophic networks. Here, we study the impact of underwater noise on the predatory functional response of damselfly larvae. We compared the feeding rates of larvae under anthropogenic noise, natural noise, and silent conditions. Our results suggest that underwater noise (pooling the effects of anthropogenic noise and natural noise) decreases the feeding rate of damselflies significantly compared to relatively silent conditions. In particular, natural noise increased the handling time significantly compared to the silent treatment, thus reducing the feeding rate. Unexpectedly, feeding rates under anthropogenic noise were not reduced significantly compared to silent conditions. This study suggests that noise per se may not necessarily have negative impacts on trophic interactions. Instead, the impact of noise on feeding rates may be explained by the presence of nonlinearities in acoustic signals, which may be more abundant in natural compared to anthropogenic noise. We conclude by highlighting the importance of studying a diversity of types of acoustic pollution, and encourage further work regarding trophic interactions with insects using a functional response approach.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Acoustic disturbance; Damselfly; Functional response; Handling time; Attack rate; Trophic networks |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Oct 2017 09:04 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2023 22:37 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10841-017-0023-y |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:122129 |