DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dbrv15dzc
title: Sensory pollutants alter bird phenology and fitness across a continent

description: Expansion of anthropogenic noise and night-lighting across our
 planet is of increasing conservation concern Despite
 growing knowledge of physiological and behavioural responses to these
 stimuli from single-species and local-scale studies, whether these
 pollutants affect fitness is less clear, as is how and why species vary in
 their sensitivity to these anthropic stressors. Here, we leverage a large
 citizen science dataset paired with high-resolution noise and light data
 from across the contiguous United States to assess how these stimuli
 affect reproductive success in 142 bird species. We find responses to both
 sensory pollutants linked to the functional traits and habitat
 affiliations of species. For example, overall nest success was negatively
 correlated with noise among birds in closed environments. Species-specific
 changes in reproductive timing and hatching success in response to noise
 exposure were explained by vocalization frequency, nesting location and
 diet. Additionally, increased light-gathering ability of species’ eyes was
 associated with stronger advancements in reproductive timing in response
 to light exposure, potentially creating phenological mismatches.
 Unexpectedly, better light-gathering ability was linked to reduced clutch
 failure and increased overall nest success in response to light exposure,
 raising important questions about how responses to sensory pollutants
 counteract or exacerbate responses to other aspects of global change, such
 as climate warming. These findings demonstrate that anthropogenic noise
 and light can substantially affect breeding bird phenology and fitness,
 and underscore the need to consider sensory pollutants alongside
 traditional dimensions of the environment that typically inform
 biodiversity conservation.
description: Nest records were obtained from the Cornell Lab of
 Ornithology's NestWatch Program. From 186,705 nest records from
 2000-2014, we maximized nest record precision and plausibility by removing
 nest records: 1) with imprecise or implausible locations, 2) with
 identical coordinates in the same year, 3) implausible (e.g., negative
 clutch size) or unlikely (e.g., clutch sizes exceeding reported maximum
 for a given species, those monitored outside of the reported breeding
 season for a given species). The resulting dataset consisted of 58,506
 nest records from 142 species. Analyses of this dataset
 with spatially-explicit mixed-effect models generated a second dataset
 consisting of effect sizes and standard error estimates for the effects of
 noise or light on 27 individual species for the following response
 variables: clutch initiation (i.e., day first egg was laid), clutch size,
 clutch failure, partial hatch failure (i.e., whether any eggs in the nest
 failed to hatch) and overall nest success (i.e., whether a nest fledged at
 least one chick or not). These data were paired with several
 species traits: 1) Peak vocal frequency, which reflects
 the frequency at which a vocalization has the highest amplitude.
 2) The ratio of the eye corneal diameter and transverse diameter,
 which reflects an eye's light gathering ability. Direct measurements
 were obtained for 16 of 27 species. Values for the remaining 11 species
 were imputed using the phylopars function in the R package Rphylopars
 using a larger database of 77 North American bird species and trait
 information reflective of morphology and ecology. 3)
 Diet, categorized as plant-based or animal-based. Omnivorous species were
 grouped with animal-based.  4) Whether a bird species
 nested in a cavity or not. Included in this dataset are
 summary statistics regarding species-specific exposure to noise and light.
 Specifically, mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum noise and
 light exposure values for nests in the dataset.
description: <strong>Four data files and associated ReadMe
 files are included</strong>: 1)
 "Senzaki_etal_NestWatchDataset.csv" - Full NestWatch
 database. 2)
 "Senzaki_etal_SpeciesMatrixForImputation.csv" - Database used
 for imputation of eye geometries. 3)
 "Senzaki_traits&responses.csv" - Database including
 species-specific responses to noise and light, species traits, and summary
 information for species exposure to noise and light.
 <strong>Phylogeny</strong>: "Jetz_ConsensusPhy.tre" - One consensus phylogeny from Jetz et al. (2012) Nature 491: 444-448, which was used with database 2 and 3. <strong>Associated Code</strong>: Three R scripts are provided: 1. "Senzaki_etal_NestWatch_SampleCode.R" - Example spatially-explicit mixed-effect models are provided for both multi-species models and single-species models. 2. "Senzaki_etal_NestWatch_Imputation.R" - Imputation of corneal:transverse data. Code used for data imputation is supplied. 3. "Senzaki_etal_NestWatch_TraitsAndResponses.R" - Analysis of relationships between responses to noise or light and traits. Code for the phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) analyses is provided.