Anthropogenic noise is an increasingly widespread pollutant, with a rapidly burgeoning literature demonstrating impacts on humans and other animals. However, most studies have simply considered if there is an effect of noise, examining the overall cohort response. Although substantial evidence exists for intraspecific variation in responses to other anthropogenic disturbances, this possibility has received relatively little experimental attention with respect to noise. Here, we used field-based playbacks with dwarf mongooses (Helogale parvula) to test how traffic noise affects vigilance behavior and to examine potential variation between individuals of different age class, sex, and dominance status. Foragers exhibited a stronger immediate reaction and increased their subsequent vigilance (both that on the ground and as a sentinel) in response to traffic-noise playback compared with ambient-sound playback. Traffic-noise playback also resulted in sentinels conducting longer bouts and being more likely to change post height or location than in ambient-sound playback. Moreover, there was evidence of variation in noise responses with respect to age class and dominance status but not sex. In traffic noise, foraging pups were more likely to flee and were slower to resume foraging than adults; they also tended to increase their vigilance more than adults. Dominants were more likely than subordinates to move post during sentinel bouts conducted in traffic-noise trials. Our findings suggest that the vigilance–foraging trade-off is affected by traffic noise but that individuals differ in how they respond. Future work should, therefore, consider intrapopulation response variation to understand fully the population-wide effects of this global pollutant.

中文翻译：

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侏儒猫鼬对人为噪声的行为反应的种群内变异

人为噪声是一种越来越普遍的污染物，迅速发展的文献证明了对人类和其他动物的影响。然而，大多数研究只是简单地考虑了是否存在噪音影响，检查整体队列反应。尽管存在大量证据表明在对其他人为干扰的反应中存在种内变异，但这种可能性在噪声方面受到的实验关注相对较少。在这里，我们使用了侏儒猫鼬 (Helogale parvula) 的基于现场的回放来测试交通噪音如何影响警惕行为，并检查不同年龄段、性别和支配地位的个体之间的潜在变化。与环境声音回放相比，觅食者对交通噪音回放表现出更强的即时反应并提高了随后的警惕性（在地面上和作为哨兵）。交通噪音播放还导致哨兵进行更长时间的比赛，并且比环境声音播放更有可能改变柱子高度或位置。此外，有证据表明噪声反应在年龄等级和支配地位方面存在差异，但与性别无关。在交通噪音中，觅食的幼崽比成年人更容易逃跑，恢复觅食的速度也更慢；他们也比成年人更容易提高警惕。在交通噪音试验中进行的哨兵较量期间，支配者比下级更有可能移动岗位。我们的研究结果表明，警惕-觅食权衡受到交通噪音的影响，但个体的反应方式不同。因此，未来的工作应该考虑种群内的反应变化，以充分了解这种全球污染物对种群的影响。