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Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide an opportunity to rapidly census wildlife in remote areas while removing some of the hazards. However, wildlife may respond negatively to the UAVs, thereby skewing counts. We surveyed four species of Arctic cliff-nesting seabirds (glaucous gull Larus hyperbore...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5738335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29263372 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18202-3 |
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author | Brisson-Curadeau, Émile Bird, David Burke, Chantelle Fifield, David A. Pace, Paul Sherley, Richard B. Elliott, Kyle H. |
author_facet | Brisson-Curadeau, Émile Bird, David Burke, Chantelle Fifield, David A. Pace, Paul Sherley, Richard B. Elliott, Kyle H. |
author_sort | Brisson-Curadeau, Émile |
collection | PubMed |
description | Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide an opportunity to rapidly census wildlife in remote areas while removing some of the hazards. However, wildlife may respond negatively to the UAVs, thereby skewing counts. We surveyed four species of Arctic cliff-nesting seabirds (glaucous gull Larus hyperboreus, Iceland gull Larus glaucoides, common murre Uria aalge and thick-billed murre Uria lomvia) using a UAV and compared censusing techniques to ground photography. An average of 8.5% of murres flew off in response to the UAV, but >99% of those birds were non-breeders. We were unable to detect any impact of the UAV on breeding success of murres, except at a site where aerial predators were abundant and several birds lost their eggs to predators following UAV flights. Furthermore, we found little evidence for habituation by murres to the UAV. Most gulls flew off in response to the UAV, but returned to the nest within five minutes. Counts of gull nests and adults were similar between UAV and ground photography, however the UAV detected up to 52.4% more chicks because chicks were camouflaged and invisible to ground observers. UAVs provide a less hazardous and potentially more accurate method for surveying wildlife. We provide some simple recommendations for their use. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5738335 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57383352017-12-21 Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census Brisson-Curadeau, Émile Bird, David Burke, Chantelle Fifield, David A. Pace, Paul Sherley, Richard B. Elliott, Kyle H. Sci Rep Article Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide an opportunity to rapidly census wildlife in remote areas while removing some of the hazards. However, wildlife may respond negatively to the UAVs, thereby skewing counts. We surveyed four species of Arctic cliff-nesting seabirds (glaucous gull Larus hyperboreus, Iceland gull Larus glaucoides, common murre Uria aalge and thick-billed murre Uria lomvia) using a UAV and compared censusing techniques to ground photography. An average of 8.5% of murres flew off in response to the UAV, but >99% of those birds were non-breeders. We were unable to detect any impact of the UAV on breeding success of murres, except at a site where aerial predators were abundant and several birds lost their eggs to predators following UAV flights. Furthermore, we found little evidence for habituation by murres to the UAV. Most gulls flew off in response to the UAV, but returned to the nest within five minutes. Counts of gull nests and adults were similar between UAV and ground photography, however the UAV detected up to 52.4% more chicks because chicks were camouflaged and invisible to ground observers. UAVs provide a less hazardous and potentially more accurate method for surveying wildlife. We provide some simple recommendations for their use. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5738335/ /pubmed/29263372 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18202-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Brisson-Curadeau, Émile Bird, David Burke, Chantelle Fifield, David A. Pace, Paul Sherley, Richard B. Elliott, Kyle H. Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
title | Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
title_full | Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
title_fullStr | Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
title_full_unstemmed | Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
title_short | Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
title_sort | seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5738335/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29263372 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18202-3 |
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