Understanding mammal avoidance of human settlements
Jonathan R. Potts, Luca Börger, Marlee A. Tucker, Federico Ossi, Scott W. Yanco, Diego Ellis‐Soto, Thomas Müller, Ruth Y. Oliver, Mario H. Alves, Walter Arnold, Nina Attias, Guillaume Bastille‐Rousseau, Jerrold L. Belant, J. David Blount, Dean E. Beyer, Francesca Cagnacci, Simon Chamaillé‐Jammes, Aung N. Chan, Eric K. Cole, Jessica S. Cornils, Rogerio Cunha de Paula, Vickie DeNicola, Arnaud L. J. Desbiez, Sarah R. Dewey, David Drake, Michael Egan, Jasper A. J. Eikelboom, Morgan Farmer, Mathieu Garel, Jacob R. Goheen, Hans Peter Hansen, Lars Haugaard, Mark Hebblewhite, Morten Heim, Miloš Ježek, Lilla Jordán, Douglas N. Kamaru, Miha Krofel, Tayler N. LaSharr, Peter Leimgruber, Anne Loison, Ryan A. Long, Matthias‐Claudio Loretto, Pascal Marchand, Erling Meisingset, Joerg Melzheimer, Kevin L. Monteith, John J. Morgan, Rasmus M. Mortensen, Rebekka Mueller, Atle Mysterud, Astrid Olejarz, Teresa Oliveira, Manuela Panzacchi, Ruben Portas, Hubert Potočnik, Herbert H. T. Prins, Laura R. Prugh, Nathan Ranc, Ralf Roeder, Christer M. Rolandsen, Çağan Şekercioğlu, Aldin Selimovic, Rachel Smiley, Erling Johan Solberg, Olav Strand, Peter Sunde, Carole Toïgo, Bram Van Moorter, Tana L. Verzuh, Bettina Wachter, Brittany L. Wagler, Jesse Whittington, Christopher C. Wilmers, George Wittemyer, Christian RutzAbstract
Anthropogenic land conversion is putting increasing pressure on wildlife populations around the world. To mitigate impacts, it is necessary to develop a detailed mechanistic understanding of how animals are affected by different types of human activity. A key challenge is to disentangle the effects of static infrastructure, like roads or buildings, and the presence of humans in the landscape.
To address this question, we examined if terrestrial mammals altered their movement behaviour around buildings in response to reduced human mobility during COVID‐19 lockdowns. We compiled GPS tracking data from 35 study sites across five continents, for 10 carnivore species and 13 herbivore species, totalling >1 million location records from 586 individuals. For each study, we used integrated step selection analysis to test the extent to which animals changed their avoidance of buildings as lockdown took effect, leveraging the recently released Microsoft MLBuildings dataset of global building locations.
Analysis of population‐level effects revealed that, in areas with high Human Footprint Index (HFI), animals tended to show a significant reduction in their avoidance of buildings during lockdown, but not in low HFI areas. No such trend was detected during equivalent periods in years other than 2020, indicating that behavioural changes were a result of reduced human mobility during lockdowns.
Overall, our findings suggest that animals living alongside humans exhibit greater plasticity when people change their behaviour, likely indicating the combined effects of environmental filtering and habituation. More generally, our study provides a critical first step towards developing evidence‐based tools for forecasting how wildlife movement behaviour may change in response to different land‐use strategies, human activities, conservation interventions or environmental perturbations.