User:KestrelFlight/sandbox

Adaptation of Bird Behavior in Response to Urbanization
This looks like a great collection of sources to use for your assignment. I think having a focus on birds and spreading it between song and other behaviors is a good idea, there is a lot out there! Evol&#38;Glass (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Behavioral Adaptation in Birds
Your outline is a bit sparse, so it is difficult to provide specific feedback. I would think about how to order your topics from broader to more specific. For example, birdsong is pretty specific, but competition in cities and living in urban environments are both broader topics and would likely help set up the rest of your article.

In response to your question about brain size – some folks use brain size as a proxy for changes in behavior. Also, behaviors can be genetically-based, so the two options you question are not alternatives to one another.

Looking forward to seeing how your article develops! (2/5)

Kasey Evol&#38;Glass (talk) 17:58, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Outline
Residing in urban areas can alter the behaviors of species as they adjust over time to living in a highly modified habitat in close proximity to humans.


 * 1) Discuss changes in birdsong over time- frequency, dialect, transmission distance.
 * 2) How living in urban environments acclimated birds to human presence. (Flight initiation distance)
 * 3) Species interference- competition in cities.
 * 4) Brain size- would this count as behavioral or genetic?

Behavioral Changes
Residing in urban environments can alter the behavior of species as they adjust over time to living in highly modified habitats in close proximity to humans. Some traits such as brain size have been shown to affect a species' skills in adapting to urban areas by allowing greater versatility in their ability to adapt. Even among species with the adaptations to live in urban areas, interactions with other present species such as competitors can limit the adaption of species to urban environments to the more dominant of the interacting species. This further limits the species' ability to thrive in urban environments, but for the species that do settle into urban environments changes in behavior have been shown both within and between species.

Avian Adaptations
Avian perception of humans as a threat alters as birds adjust to living in urban environments, causing them to become less fearful of nearby humans. Birds living in urban areas have a shorter flight initiation distance, the distance a potential threat can approach before the bird retreats, than rural birds of the same species. Additionally, species with a higher number of generations living in urban environments are less cautious around humans than species that arrived more recently in urban areas. As urban birds are less cautious around people they also show higher levels of aggression in defending their territory and nests against humans than their rural counterparts. Caution in urban animals around humans also varies from city to city, affected by both the positive and negative human actions taken against a species within each urban center as the species associate the actions with the threat level that humans pose and respond accordingly.

Birdsong has also been greatly altered due to urban influences, primarily due to the large amounts of low frequency noises caused by traffic, which is caused by soundwaves with longer wavelengths. While the frequency of an individual's birdsong does not change, over generations urban birds have developed a higher minimum frequency to be heard over the ambient low-frequency sounds. Urban birds also sing with a higher amplitude, or volume, than their rural counterparts, causing a greater impact on the distance birdsong travels than frequency does by projecting further. The effect of amplitude on birdsong in urban cities, in part as a result of the Lombard effect wherein the volume of an individual increases as the surrounding noise increases in order to be heard, was notable during the COVID-19 lockdowns where the amplitude of birdsongs dropped while still continuing to maintain high transmission distances. The effect of urbanization on birdsong also includes changes over generation in the frequency and distribution in dialect.

* notes: I have been working on improving structure, rewording wordy sentences and removing redundant sentences, and ruthlessly exterminating unnecessary commas. I have also added brief elaboration to certain facts in order to explain the importance of aspects where it may not have be clear or as understandable how the conclusion was reached.

Feedback:
To start off I think you did a great job covering a considerable amount of information in a straightforward and concise fashion. There is much to learn from your passage, and it is not cumbersome by any means to the extent that a person with zero knowledge on the subject would struggle to read through it. Secondly, I am really intrigued by your section on birdsong. I found that the flow of this paragraph was your strongest, and the information given (especially in relation to current world issues like Covid-19) give the topic significance in a modern day context. I felt that you represented this section as a whole really well.

As for big picture, I personally think that your article entry could benefit from subheadings to guide your paragraphs following the introduction. Though it is entirely up to how you want to represent the information, I feel that the "Birds" heading is too general, and individual topics under specific headings could help with the differentiation and flow between your topics. Furthermore I think that some of your claims and ideas could use some more support. It is evident when you cite a source directly behind a claim that is it likely a conclusion of the linked study, although from a reader's perspective it is challenging to understand the, "Why?". In this regard I think you should expand on your thoughts, and maybe even use the author's rationale from the studies themselves or the results to help in doing so. An example of this is represented in the reference to the Lombard Effect considering that I am not personally familiar with the subject, and it is not clear whether or not the following part of the sentence is defining the Lombard Effect or simply finishing off a related point.

On a smaller scale, there are some sentences that I believe could benefit from slight adjustment to read more clear. For example your sentence, "Urban birds, in displaying less caution, also show higher levels of aggression in defending their territory and nests", could read better if represented like "Urban birds that display less caution also exhibit higher levels of aggression in defending their territory and nests." I also felt that some sentences such as, " Caution in urban animals around humans also varies from city to city, affected by the general human actions taken against a species, whether positive or negative, within each urban center" with multiple commas and pauses were challenging to understand without rereading multiple times. I would suggest considering either breaking a sentence covering this many thoughts into two sentences, or trying to word it in a fashion that avoids numerous commas.

-Blake

Birdsong
Zollinger, Sue Anne, et al. "Higher Songs of City Birds May Not Be an Individual Response to Noise." Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 9 Aug. 2017, royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.0602.

Luther, David, and Luis Baptista. "Urban Noise and the Cultural Evolution of Bird Songs." Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 21 Oct. 2009, royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2009.1571.

Hu, Yang, and Gonçalo C. Cardoso. "Are Bird Species That Vocalize at Higher Frequencies Preadapted to Inhabit Noisy Urban Areas?" OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 7 Oct. 2009, academic.oup.com/beheco/article/20/6/1268/200758.

Nemeth, Erwin, and Henrik Brumm. “Birds and Anthropogenic Noise: Are Urban Songs Adaptive?” The American Naturalist, 1 Oct. 2010, www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/656275.

Derryberry, Elizabeth P., et al. “Singing in a Silent Spring: Birds Respond to a Half-Century Soundscape Reversion during the COVID-19 Shutdown.” Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 30 Oct. 2020, science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/575.

Differences in Behavior
Knight, Richard L., et al. “Nest-Defense Behavior of the American Crow in Urban and Rural Areas.” The Condor, vol. 89, no. 1, 1987, p. 175., doi:10.2307/1368772.

Clucas, Barbara, and John M. Marzluff. “Attitudes and Actions Toward Birds in Urban Areas: Human Cultural Differences Influence Bird Behavior.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 1 Jan. 2012, academic.oup.com/auk/article/129/1/8/5148689.

Møller, Anders Pape. “Flight Distance of Urban Birds, Predation, and Selection for Urban Life.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol. 63, no. 1, 2008, pp. 63–75., doi:10.1007/s00265-008-0636-y.

Maklakov, Alexei A., et al. “Brains and the City: Big-Brained Passerine Birds Succeed in Urban Environments.” Biology Letters, vol. 7, no. 5, 27 Apr. 2011, pp. 730–732., doi:10.1098/rsbl.2011.0341.

Interspecies Interactions
Martin, Paul R., and Frances Bonier. “Species Interactions Limit the Occurrence of Urban-Adapted Birds in Cities.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115, no. 49, 5 Nov. 2018, doi:10.1073/pnas.1809317115.