They found that seedlings were four times as abundant in quiet sites compared to noisy ones. Researchers also counted the number of pinyon pine seedlings in quiet and noisy areas. While they end up recovering lots of seeds, it’s many of those forgotten sees that end of becoming the future of the forest.” “A single scrub jay in the fall, when a lot of these seeds are available, will collect and disperse hundreds, covering them under a few centimeters of soil. “There is a lot of evidence that the western scrub jay and the pinyon pine co-evolved,” he says. On the other hand, pinyon pine seeds collected by the jays in quiet areas can eventually sprout, Francis explains. Because seeds eaten by mice won’t survive digestion, the noisy areas that mice prefer are likely to have less pinyon pines in the future, the study says. Several animals fed on both sites equally during a three-day period, but researchers found that in particular mice preferred noisy sites while western scrub jays avoided them completely. A motion triggered camera allowed researchers to see which animals took the seeds. To see if noise from the gas wells might impact pinyon pines in the area, researchers scattered the plant’s seeds in both noisy and quiet sites. (Photo courtesy of Clinton Francis)īetween 20, Francis and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments in the Bureau of Land Management’s Canyon Wildlife Area in New Mexico, where thousands of natural gas wells-and their noisy compressors-are located. Researchers found that western scrub jays avoid noisy areas and are less likely to collect and disperse pinyon pine seeds around manmade noise. Other authors of the study include Catherine Ortega, most recently of Fort Lewis College, and Alexander Cruz and Nathan Kleist of the University of Colorado, Boulder. The study appears in the March 21 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “We were really interested in trying to understand how noise, as it alters the behavior of some animals, could trigger other consequences for species that depend on species with unique response to noise,” says Clinton Francis, the study’s lead author and scholar at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina. A new study suggests that the effects of such manmade noise on birds and other animals impacts plants that rely on those species for seed dispersal and pollination. In the last few decades, scientists found that low-frequency pitched larger birds are less likely to settle in cities among the din of traffic and that some songbirds will sing louder and longer in noisy surroundings. This system has helped the pinyon pine populate a wide range in the American west, but an invisible threat could affect the dispersal and future of the tree and other plants: sound.Ī growing body of research has shown that even the invisible waves of manmade noise alter animal behavior. Though most seeds are eaten, those left behind take root and eventually sprout. When its seeds drop from cones, birds, along with other creatures, collect and bury them. (Photo courtesy of Clinton Francis)ĭespite its powerful 30-foot stance, the pinyon pine is paralyzed, relying heavily on birds and other mammals to help it reproduce. A new study finds that man-made noise has ripple effects on plants such as pinyon pine, whose natural seed dispersers tend to avoid noisy areas.
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