RE: [nfc-l] Article about NFCs and light

[John Kearney]

Hi Dan and all,

Thanks for your summary of your recent paper. I look forward to hearing more 
about your study of the alternatives that might explain these results. It seems 
to me that your work indicates that in the future we should include some 
measure of light levels as part of the metadata for listening stations.

John

 

From: bounce-120434264-28417...@list.cornell.edu 
[mailto:bounce-120434264-28417...@list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Daniel Joshua 
Mennill
Sent: April-29-16 07:37
To: Laura C. Gooch 
Cc: NFC-L 
Subject: Re: [nfc-l] Article about NFCs and light

 

Hello Everyone,

It is nice to find renewed interest in the NFC-L list.

Thank you, Laura, for posting this information about the article my research 
team published in *Condor: Ornithological Applications*, concerning 
ground-level lights and NFCs.  I thought I would provide a brief explanation of 
our research.  My students and I conducted simultaneous NFC recordings at 
adjacent "dark sites" (no artificial lights) and "light sites" (sights with a 
low-level artificial light, such as a porch light or a street light).  We found 
significantly higher numbers of NFCs above the light sites compared to the dark 
sites; on average, we found three times the number of NFCs about the light 
sites (on average, 31 NFCs per night above light sites compared to 11 NFCs per 
night above dark sites).  We also found a greater diversity of species 
producing NFCs about light sites, but this difference was not significant (on 
average, 6.5 species or species-groups above light sites compared to 4.5 
species or species-groups above dark sites).  We conducted these recordings at 
16 pairs of sites in southern Ontario, north of Lake Erie.

The take-away message from this paper: ground-level lights influence the 
behaviour of birds passing overhead in migration, even low-level lights like 
the lights in our backyards.  We don't know if this is because birds are 
lowering their altitude in response to lights, or changing the course of their 
migration to pass over the lights, or being induced to call more often over 
lights compared to dark sites.  I plan to try to study these alternatives, 
going forward.

I'd be happy to share my "author's copy" of our *Condor* paper to anyone who 
wants to read it; please email me off the list.  I'd also like to point out 
that my website has a set of spectrograms of NFCs (LINK 
<http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/pubs/2014Condor371supp.pdf> ) 
from 40 different species or species-groups, based on recordings we've made in 
Ontario over the last few years (it is a supplement from a previous paper that 
we published in *Condor*, showing that the number of NFCs is a good predictor 
of the timing and magnitude of migration of birds through the Great Lakes).

Happy NFC listening to all on this list!

Dan

 




Dan Mennill

Associate Professor

Chair, Biology Graduate Program

Department of Biological Sciences

University of Windsor

Email: dmenn...@uwindsor.ca <mailto:dmenn...@uwindsor.ca> 

Web: www.uwindsor.ca/dmennill <http://www.uwindsor.ca/dmennill> 

 

On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 12:48 PM, Laura C. Gooch mailto:lgo...@alum.mit.edu> > wrote:

Folks,

In the spirit of recent discussions from Geoff, John, and Chris, I thought list 
members might be interested in this from the May 2016 issue of The Condor:


Anthropogenic light is associated with increased vocal activity by nocturnally 
migrating birds


Matthew J. Watson  <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#aff1> 
1, <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#n101> a* 
<http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#cor1> , David R. Wilson  
<http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#aff1> 1, 
<http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#n102> b, and Daniel J. 
Mennill  <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#aff1> 1* 
<http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#cor1> 

http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1

These results certainly suggest that comparing call numbers from urban and 
rural sites is problematic. It's not clear to me what impact an isolated light 
might have.

Yours,

Laura Gooch

P.S. If you need a hand with getting access to the full article, let me know 
off of the list.



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[nfc-l] Article about NFCs and light

[Laura C. Gooch]

Folks,

In the spirit of recent discussions from Geoff, John, and Chris, I 
thought list members might be interested in this from the May 2016 issue 
of /The Condor/:


  Anthropogenic light is associated with increased vocal activity by
  nocturnally migrating birds

*Matthew J. Watson ^1, 
^a 
* 
, David R. 
Wilson ^1, 
^b 
, and Daniel 
J. Mennill ^1 
* 
*

http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1

These results certainly suggest that comparing call numbers from urban 
and rural sites is problematic. It's not clear to me what impact an 
isolated light might have.

Yours,

Laura Gooch

P.S. If you need a hand with getting access to the full article, let me 
know off of the list.



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Re: [nfc-l] Article about NFCs and light

[Laura C. Gooch]

Dan and NFC-ers,

Dan -- thanks for the note. I've found your papers on NFCs very 
valuable, and I've made good use of your spectrogram table. I found it 
particularly reassuring to see that you lumped species that I've always 
had trouble distinguishing. I'd recommend the table from your earlier 
paper to anyone struggling to get a handle on flight call categorization.

One question about your handling of calls in the dark/light site study: 
How did you handle same-species calls withing a short time period? My 
apologies if that's in the methods explanation. I did look for it, but 
missed it if it's there.

Thanks for your work.

Laura

Laura Gooch
Research Associate
Cleveland Museum of Natural History

On 4/29/2016 6:28 AM, Daniel Joshua Mennill wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> It is nice to find renewed interest in the NFC-L list.
>
> Thank you, Laura, for posting this information about the article my 
> research team published in /Condor: Ornithological Applications/, 
> concerning ground-level lights and NFCs.  I thought I would provide a 
> brief explanation of our research.  My students and I conducted 
> simultaneous NFC recordings at adjacent "dark sites" (no artificial 
> lights) and "light sites" (sights with a low-level artificial light, 
> such as a porch light or a street light). We found significantly 
> higher numbers of NFCs above the light sites compared to the dark 
> sites; on average, we found three times the number of NFCs about the 
> light sites (on average, 31 NFCs per night above light sites compared 
> to 11 NFCs per night above dark sites).  We also found a greater 
> diversity of species producing NFCs about light sites, but this 
> difference was not significant (on average, 6.5 species or 
> species-groups above light sites compared to 4.5 species or 
> species-groups above dark sites).  We conducted these recordings at 16 
> pairs of sites in southern Ontario, north of Lake Erie.
>
> The take-away message from this paper: ground-level lights influence 
> the behaviour of birds passing overhead in migration, even low-level 
> lights like the lights in our backyards.  We don't know if this is 
> because birds are lowering their altitude in response to lights, or 
> changing the course of their migration to pass over the lights, or 
> being induced to call more often over lights compared to dark sites.  
> I plan to try to study these alternatives, going forward.
>
> I'd be happy to share my "author's copy" of our /Condor/ paper to 
> anyone who wants to read it; please email me off the list.  I'd also 
> like to point out that my website has a set of spectrograms of NFCs 
> (LINK 
> )
>  
> from 40 different species or species-groups, based on recordings we've 
> made in Ontario over the last few years (it is a supplement from a 
> previous paper that we published in /Condor/, showing that the number 
> of NFCs is a good predictor of the timing and magnitude of migration 
> of birds through the Great Lakes).
>
> Happy NFC listening to all on this list!
>
> Dan
>
>
> Dan Mennill
> Associate Professor
> Chair, Biology Graduate Program
> Department of Biological Sciences
> University of Windsor
> Email: dmenn...@uwindsor.ca 
> Web: www.uwindsor.ca/dmennill 
>
> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 12:48 PM, Laura C. Gooch  > wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> In the spirit of recent discussions from Geoff, John, and Chris, I
> thought list members might be interested in this from the May 2016
> issue of /The Condor/:
>
>
>   Anthropogenic light is associated with increased vocal activity
>   by nocturnally migrating birds
>
> *Matthew J. Watson ^1,
> ^a
> *
> ,
> David R. Wilson ^1,
> ^b
> , and
> Daniel J. Mennill ^1
> *
> *
>
> http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1
>
> These results certainly suggest that comparing call numbers from
> urban and rural sites is problematic. It's not clear to me what
> impact an isolated light might have.
>
> Yours,
>
> Laura Gooch
>
> P.S. If you need a hand with getting access to the full article,
> let me know off of the list.
>
>
> --
> *NFC-L List Info:*
> Welcome and Basics 
> Rules and Information 
> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave
>