TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schäfer, Julia E.
A1  - Janocha, Marcel M.
A1  - Klaus, Sebastian
A1  - Tietze, Dieter Thomas
T1  - How weather instead of urbanity measures affects song trait variability in three European passerine bird species
T2  - Ecology and evolution
N2  - Previous studies detected an influence of urban characteristics on song traits in passerine birds, that is, song adjustments to ambient noise in urban areas. Several studies already described the effect of weather conditions on the behavior of birds, but not the effect on song traits. We investigate, if song trait variability changes along a continuous urbanity gradient in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. We examined, for the first time on a larger scale, the influence of weather on song parameters. We made song recordings of three common passerine species: the blue and great tit (Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) and Parus major Linnaeus, 1758) and the European blackbird (Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758). We measured different song traits and performed statistical analyses and modeling on a variety of variables—among them urbanity and weather parameters. Remarkably, we found only few cases of a significant influence of urbanity parameters on song traits. The influence of weather parameters (air pressure, atmospheric humidity, air and soil temperatures) on song traits was highly significant. Birds in Frankfurt face high noise pollution and might show different adaptations to high noise levels. The song trait variability of the investigated species is affected more by weather conditions than by urban characteristics in Frankfurt. However, the three species react differently to specific weather parameters. Smaller species seem to be more affected by weather than larger species.
KW  - air pressure
KW  - bioacoustics
KW  - humidity
KW  - noise
KW  - soil temperature
KW  - temperature
KW  - urbanity gradient
KW  - urbanization
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/35501
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-355018
SN  - 2045-7758
N1  - This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
VL  - 7
IS  - 13
SP  - 4868
EP  - 4880
PB  - John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
CY  - [s. l.]
ER  -