As human development expands, environments are increasingly exposed to anthropogenic noise which may disrupt animals in a variety of ways. Anthropogenic noise can be disruptive both as a source of auditory masking, which prevents animals from acquiring acoustic information (Brumm and Slabbekoorn 2005), or as a source of distraction, reallocating an individual’s attention and impairing an animal’s ability to engage in critical behaviors such as prey risk assessment (Chan et al. 2010). In particular, it can disrupt foraging and vigilance because they already involve a tradeoff of attention (Lima and Dill 1990). Through masking, vigilance increases in high noise environments because vital acoustic signals are blocked. For example, receivers may not be able to distinguish sounds that occupy the same frequencies (Brumm and Slabbekoorn 2005). Without sound, animals may be unable to properly assess risk level or accuracy and thus waste energy responding to anthropogenic noise in the same way they would to the presence of a predator (Frid and Dill 2002). Meanwhile, the distracted prey hypothesis suggests that the presence of a novel stimulus may cause individuals to divide their attention between multiple potential threats (Chan et al. 2010), which can either impair foraging or inhibit risk assessment by prey. In situations with visual and auditory distractors, Caribbean hermit crabs Coenobita clypeatus allowed humans (which were simulated predators) to come significantly closer before responding to them when compared with crabs without distractors (Chan et al. 2010). Regardless of the mechanism by which anthropogenic noise disrupts behavior, delayed reaction, and flight times make animals more vulnerable to threats. To investigate whether exposure to noise affects blue-tailed skinks’ Emoia impar ability to assess risk through masking or distraction, we conducted an experiment where we quantified the behavioral response to playback of white noise and the subsequent flight initiation distance (FID) for skinks exposed to white noise or to a silent control. Detailed methods are described in the Supplementary MaterialsSupplementary Materials.

中文翻译：

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白噪声对蓝尾石龙鱼行为和飞行反应的影响

随着人类发展的扩大，环境越来越受到人为噪声的影响，这可能以各种方式破坏动物。人为噪声既可以破坏听觉，从而阻止动物获取声音信息（Brumm和Slabbekoorn，2005年），也可以使人分心，重新分配个人的注意力并损害动物从事诸如猎物风险评估（Chan等，2010）。特别是，它可能会破坏觅食和警惕性，因为它们已经涉及到注意力的权衡（Lima and Dill 1990）。通过屏蔽，由于重要的声音信号被阻挡，因此在高噪声环境中提高了警惕性。例如，接收器可能无法区分占据相同频率的声音（Brumm和Slabbekoorn 2005）。没有声音，动物可能无法正确评估风险水平或准确性，从而浪费能量来应对人为噪声，就像存在掠食者一样（Frid and Dill 2002）。同时，分散注意力的猎物假设表明，新型刺激的存在可能导致个人将注意力分散在多种潜在威胁之间（Chan等，2010），这可能会损害觅食或抑制猎物进行风险评估。在有视觉和听觉干扰的情况下，加勒比寄居蟹 分散的猎物假设表明，新刺激的存在可能导致个人将注意力分散在多种潜在威胁之间（Chan等，2010），这可能会损害觅食或抑制猎物进行风险评估。在有视觉和听觉干扰的情况下，加勒比寄居蟹 分散的猎物假设表明，新刺激的存在可能导致个人将注意力分散在多种潜在威胁之间（Chan等，2010），这可能会损害觅食或抑制猎物进行风险评估。在有视觉和听觉干扰的情况下，加勒比寄居蟹与没有干扰物的螃蟹相比，Coenobita lypeatus使人类（被模拟为掠食性动物）在对它们做出反应之前变得更加接近（Chan等人，2010）。不论人为噪声干扰行为，延迟反应和飞行时间的机制如何，动物都会更容易受到威胁。为了调查暴露于噪声是否会影响蓝尾石龙的掩盖或分散注意力的风险，我们进行了一项实验，量化了白噪声回放对行为的反应以及随后暴露的石龙的飞行起始距离（FID）白噪声或静音控制。补充材料补充材料中描述了详细的方法。