Abstract
Birds are the best-studied taxa with respect to our knowledge about predation risk assessment. In the past 4 years, global progress in this field has been made due to a remarkable number of synthetic reviews, meta-analyses, and comparative analyses that are based on databases containing tens of thousands of observations on how birds escape from predators. In addition, novel empirical studies, often on more than one species at a time, have provided new insights into mechanistic diversity. Birds fly, walk, and swim away from approaching threats and the distance at which they do so—quantified as flight initiation distance—reveals much about their perceptions of predation risk. The contexts that influence risk assessment and management in both ecological and evolutionary time have largely been identified by thorough study of the life history, natural history, physiology, environment, and phylogenies of birds. We have also discovered continental and latitudinal differences in risk management. A large set of applied studies now use this knowledge to both increase our understanding of the vulnerability of birds to anthropogenic disturbance, and provide insight into how best to manage it. Future advances require: (1) developing a better understanding of the sensory mechanisms involved in risk assessment, (2) studies of individuals that are sampled repeatedly, and (3) the development of decision-support tools for wildlife managers to help us better coexist with birds in an increasingly urban world.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Blake Jones and Liana Zanette for inviting me to give a keynote address, upon which this paper is based, at the 2018 International Ornithology Congress Vancouver Symposium entitled Fear in Birds: the Consequences of Non-consumptive Predator–prey Interactions. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript. Avian FID work is remarkably collaborative and I have learned a lot from some long-term collaborators including: Esteban Fernández-Juricic, Anders Møller, Diogo Samia, and Mike Weston. I’m also thrilled to be part of newer collaborations.
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Communicated by K. L. Buchanan.
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This article is a contribution to the Topical Collection 27th International Ornithological Congress, Vancouver, Canada, 19–26 August 2018
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Blumstein, D.T. What chasing birds can teach us about predation risk effects: past insights and future directions. J Ornithol 160, 587–592 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-019-01634-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-019-01634-1