ArticleEcology and evolution2019
Contagious fear: Escape behavior increases with flock size in European gregarious birds.
Article in Ecology and evolution, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Transmission of Urgency Levels in the Alarm Calls of the Oriental Reed Warbler.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- In sickness and in health: group-living augments behavioural responses to food and predation risk for sick house finches (Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Birds of a Feather Resist Together: Sociality and Species Predict the Resilience and Recovery Strategies of Two Neotropical Birds.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Herons in Aquafarms Are More Fearful of Humans.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Flight initiation distance and bird tolerance to humans in rural and urban habitats.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Urban birds' tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by COVID-19 shutdown-induced variation in human presence.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Drones as a tool to study and monitor endangered Grey Crowned Cranes (Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Urban birds become less fearful following COVID-19 reopenings.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sex differences in social buffering and social contagion of alarm responses in zebrafish.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) escape behavior is triggered faster in smaller settlements.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Fear in urban landscapes: conspecific flock size drives escape decisions in tropical birds.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- No Evidence for Contagious Yawning in Juvenile Ravens (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Directional Preference in Avian Midbrain Saliency Computing Nucleus Reflects a Well-Designed Receptive Field Structure.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Resident birds are more behaviourally plastic than migrants.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Consistency in the flight and visual orientation distances of habituated chacma baboons after an observed leopard predation. Do flight initiation distance methods always measure perceived predation risk?Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Face mask-wear did not affect large-scale patterns in escape and alertness of urban and rural birds during the COVID-19 pandemic.The Science of the total environment · 2021Article
- Face masks matter: Eurasian tree sparrows show reduced fear responses to people wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.Global ecology and conservation · 2020Article
- Anti-predator behavior along elevational and latitudinal gradients in dark-eyed juncos.Current zoology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Flight initiation distance (FID), the distance at which individuals take flight when approached by a potential (human) predator, is a tool for understanding predator-prey interactions. Among the factors affecting FID, tests of effects of group size (i.e., number of potential prey) on FID have yielded contrasting results. Group size or flock size could either affect FID negatively (i.e., the dilution effect caused by the presence of many individuals) or positively (i.e., increased vigilance due to more eyes scanning for predators). These effects may be associated with gregarious species, because such species should be better adapted to exploiting information from other individuals in the group than nongregarious species. Sociality may explain why earlier findings on group size versus FID have yielded different conclusions. Here, we analyzed how flock size affected bird FID in eight European countries. A phylogenetic generalized least square regression model was used to investigate changes in escape behavior of bird species in relation to number of individuals in the flock, starting distance, diet, latitude, and type of habitat. Flock size of different bird species influenced how species responded to perceived threats. We found that gregarious birds reacted to a potential predator earlier (longer FID) when aggregated in large flocks. These results support a higher vigilance arising from many eyes scanning in birds, suggesting that sociality may be a key factor in the evolution of antipredator behavior both in urban and rural areas. Finally, future studies comparing FID must pay explicit attention to the number of individuals in flocks of gregarious species.
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