Urban Great Tits (Parus major) Show Higher Distress Calling and Pecking Rates than Rural Birds across Europe

Abstract

Environmental change associated with urbanization is considered one of the major threats to biodiversity. Some species nevertheless seem to thrive in the urban areas, probably associated with selection for phenotypes that match urban habitats. Previous research defined different "copying styles" in distress behavior during the handling of birds. These behaviors vary along a continuum from "proactive" to "reactive" copers. By studying avian distress behaviors we aimed to broaden our understanding of the relationship between coping styles and urbanization. Using a large-scale comparative study of seven paired rural and urban sites across Europe, we assayed distress behaviors during handling of urban and rural-dwelling populations of the great tit Parus major. We detected no consistent pairwise differences in breath rate between urban and rural habitats. However, urban great tits displayed more distress calling (fear screams) and higher pecking rate (handling aggression) than rural birds. These findings suggest that urban great tits have a more proactive coping strategy when dealing with stressful conditions. This finding is in line with previous studies implying that urban great tits are more explorative, less neophobic, and display shorter flight distances than their rural counterparts, representing further aspects of the same "proactive," coping strategy. Future research should investigate whether reported differences in distress behavior are due to local adaption caused by natural selection or due to phenotypic plasticity.

Breath rate of passerines across an urbanization gradient supports the pace‐of‐life hypothesis and suggests diet‐mediated responses to handling stress

“…Previous research has shown that species usually show no or limited responses to anthropogenic disturbance (Bonier, 2012;Chavezzichinelli et al, 2010;Hudin et al, 2018;Sepp et al, 2018). In line with these results, the pace-of-life hypothesis predicts no differences in stress responses between urban and rural habitats (Sepp et al, 2018), but previous studies have been inconsistent in confirming this point with regard to BR variation, a proxy of acute stress responses to handling (Charmantier et al, 2017;Senar et al, 2017;Torné-Noguera et al, 2014). Our results, using hundreds of individuals from over a hundred species of passerines, demonstrate that there were no differences in BR, both between and within species, among natural, rural, and urban locations.…”

“…Previous research has shown inconsistent results when assessing changes in BR in response to urbanization, with different studies showing increased BR toward more urbanized areas (Charmantier, Demeyrier, Lambrechts, Perret, & Grégoire, ; Torné‐Noguera, Pagani‐Núñez, & Senar, ) or no significant differences in stress responses to handling between rural and urban birds (Senar et al., ). However, this evidence is limited to a single species (great tits Parus major ) and to a limited geographic region (SW Europe).…”

Repeated genomic signatures of adaptation to urbanisation in a songbird across Europe

“…These findings reinforce the previous idea on the importance of cognitive and behavioural changes as key responses to urbanisation in birds and in particular in great tits. Indeed, song structure and escape or distress behaviour have been previously shown to differ between urban and rural great tit populations across Europe (Senar et al 2017;Slabbekoorn and den Boer-Visser 2006;Møller and Ibáñez-Álamo 2012). Nonetheless, whether this is the result of a genetic response to selection or phenotypic plasticity is to a large extent still unknown.…”

Effects of the Urban Environment on Oxidative Stress in Early Life: Insights from a Cross-fostering Experiment

“…2016 ), behavioral ecotypes ( Charmantier et al. 2017 ; Senar et al. 2017 ), plumage coloration ( Isaksson et al.…”