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Habitat geometry rather than visual acuity limits the visibility of a ground‐nesting bird's clutch to terrestrial predators
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Habitat geometry rather than visual acuity limits the visibility of a ground‐nesting bird's clutch to terrestrial predators
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Habitat geometry rather than visual acuity limits the visibility of a ground‐nesting bird's clutch to terrestrial predators
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Journal Article
Habitat geometry rather than visual acuity limits the visibility of a ground‐nesting bird's clutch to terrestrial predators
2023
Overview
The nests of ground‐nesting birds rely heavily on camouflage for their survival, and predation risk, often linked to ecological changes from human activity, is a major source of mortality. Numerous ground‐nesting bird populations are in decline, so understanding the effects of camouflage on their nesting behavior is relevant to their conservation concerns. Habitat three‐dimensional (3D) geometry, together with predator visual abilities, viewing distance, and viewing angle, determine whether a nest is either visible, occluded, or too far away to detect. While this link is intuitive, few studies have investigated how fine‐scale geometry is likely to help defend nests from different predator guilds. We quantified nest visibility based on 3D occlusion, camouflage, and predator visual modeling in northern lapwings, Vanellus vanellus, on different land management regimes. Lapwings selected local backgrounds that had a higher 3D complexity at a spatial scale greater than their entire clutches compared to local control sites. Importantly, our findings show that habitat geometry—rather than predator visual acuity—restricts nest visibility for terrestrial predators and that their field habitats, perceived by humans as open, are functionally closed with respect to a terrestrial predator searching for nests on the ground. Taken together with lapwings' careful nest site selection, our findings highlight the importance of considering habitat geometry for understanding the evolutionary ecology and management of conservation sites for ground‐nesting birds.
We used 3D scanning and color‐calibrated images to investigate the effects of local geometry on ground‐nesting bird site selection and camouflage. We found that lapwings, Vanellus vanellus, locally select for more 3D variable areas and that the scale and shape of their nests restrict visibility more than predator visual acuity, with crop fields and wet grassland acting more like a closed habitat from the viewing angles of natural predators.
