ArticleCommunications biology2024
Urban birds' tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by COVID-19 shutdown-induced variation in human presence.
Article in Communications biology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Understanding mammal avoidance of human settlements.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Behavioral convergence under urbanization: An overlooked dimension of biotic homogenization.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Species' urbanization time but not present urban tolerance predicts avian fear responses towards human.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Integrating human mobility and animal movement data reveals complex space-use between humans and white-tailed deer in urban environments.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Urban birds' tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by COVID-19 shutdown-induced variation in human presence.Communications biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
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Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and respective shutdowns dramatically altered human activities, potentially changing human pressures on urban-dwelling animals. Here, we use such COVID-19-induced variation in human presence to evaluate, across multiple temporal scales, how urban birds from five countries changed their tolerance towards humans, measured as escape distance. We collected 6369 escape responses for 147 species and found that human numbers in parks at a given hour, day, week or year (before and during shutdowns) had a little effect on birds' escape distances. All effects centered around zero, except for the actual human numbers during escape trial (hourly scale) that correlated negatively, albeit weakly, with escape distance. The results were similar across countries and most species. Our results highlight the resilience of birds to changes in human numbers on multiple temporal scales, the complexities of linking animal fear responses to human behavior, and the challenge of quantifying both simultaneously in situ.
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