Heritability of fear of humans in urban and rural populations of a bird species.

ABSTRACT: Flight initiation distance (FID), a measure of an animal's tolerance to human disturbance and a descriptor of its fear of humans, is increasingly employed for conservation purposes and to predict the response of species to urbanization. However, most work devoted to understanding variability in FID has been conducted at the population level and little is still known about inter-individual variability in this behaviour. We estimated the heritability of FID, a factor fundamental to understanding the strength and evolutionary consequences of selection of particular phenotypes associated with human disturbances. We used a population of burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia) monitored long-term and for which FID was previously shown to be highly consistent across an individual's lifespan. Heritabi

SUBMITTER: Carrete M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4976307 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature