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Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in a global lockdown in 2020. This stagnation in human activities (‘anthropause’) has been reported to affect the behaviour of wildlife in various ways. The sika dee...

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Autores principales: Uehara, Haruka, Nishiyama, Wakana, Tatsuzawa, Shirow, Wada, Keiji, Ida, Takashi Y., Yusa, Yoichi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10187922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37192208
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285893
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author Uehara, Haruka
Nishiyama, Wakana
Tatsuzawa, Shirow
Wada, Keiji
Ida, Takashi Y.
Yusa, Yoichi
author_facet Uehara, Haruka
Nishiyama, Wakana
Tatsuzawa, Shirow
Wada, Keiji
Ida, Takashi Y.
Yusa, Yoichi
author_sort Uehara, Haruka
collection PubMed
description Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in a global lockdown in 2020. This stagnation in human activities (‘anthropause’) has been reported to affect the behaviour of wildlife in various ways. The sika deer Cervus nippon in Nara Park, central Japan, has had a unique relationship with humans, especially tourists, in which the deer bow to receive food and sometimes attack if they do not receive it. We investigated how a decrease and subsequent increase in the number of tourists visiting Nara Park affects the number of deer observed in the park and their behaviour (bows and attacks against humans). Compared with the pre-pandemic years, the number of deer in the study site decreased from an average of 167 deer in 2019 to 65 (39%) in 2020 during the pandemic period. Likewise, the number of deer bows decreased from 10.2 per deer in 2016–2017 to 6.4 (62%) in 2020–2021, whereas the proportion of deer showing aggressive behaviour did not change significantly. Moreover, the monthly numbers of deer and their bows both corresponded with the fluctuation in the number of tourists during the pandemic period of 2020 and 2021, whereas the number of attacks did not. Thus, the anthropause caused by the coronavirus altered the habitat use and behaviour of deer that have continuous interactions with humans.
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spelling pubmed-101879222023-05-17 Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities Uehara, Haruka Nishiyama, Wakana Tatsuzawa, Shirow Wada, Keiji Ida, Takashi Y. Yusa, Yoichi PLoS One Research Article Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in a global lockdown in 2020. This stagnation in human activities (‘anthropause’) has been reported to affect the behaviour of wildlife in various ways. The sika deer Cervus nippon in Nara Park, central Japan, has had a unique relationship with humans, especially tourists, in which the deer bow to receive food and sometimes attack if they do not receive it. We investigated how a decrease and subsequent increase in the number of tourists visiting Nara Park affects the number of deer observed in the park and their behaviour (bows and attacks against humans). Compared with the pre-pandemic years, the number of deer in the study site decreased from an average of 167 deer in 2019 to 65 (39%) in 2020 during the pandemic period. Likewise, the number of deer bows decreased from 10.2 per deer in 2016–2017 to 6.4 (62%) in 2020–2021, whereas the proportion of deer showing aggressive behaviour did not change significantly. Moreover, the monthly numbers of deer and their bows both corresponded with the fluctuation in the number of tourists during the pandemic period of 2020 and 2021, whereas the number of attacks did not. Thus, the anthropause caused by the coronavirus altered the habitat use and behaviour of deer that have continuous interactions with humans. Public Library of Science 2023-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10187922/ /pubmed/37192208 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285893 Text en © 2023 Uehara et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Uehara, Haruka
Nishiyama, Wakana
Tatsuzawa, Shirow
Wada, Keiji
Ida, Takashi Y.
Yusa, Yoichi
Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
title Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
title_full Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
title_fullStr Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
title_full_unstemmed Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
title_short Impacts of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
title_sort impacts of the novel coronavirus sars-cov-2 on wildlife behaviour via human activities
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10187922/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37192208
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285893
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