The short version
- A meta-analysis in Science pooled 214 experiments on 177 land and water species and found noise changed at least one trait in about 80% of them.
- A press report on the paper gives a fall in overall fitness of 27% and rises in mortality of up to 138% across the studies.
- The effects were not all one way: some birds raised their parental care in noise, and some predators gained when their prey behaved differently.
A paper published in Science on November 5 tries to put one number on what human noise does to animals. A team of UK researchers combined 214 experimental studies on 177 species, on land and in water and from six continents, using statistics that account for how closely related the species are. In about 80% of the species, noise changed at least one physiological, developmental or behavioural trait.
A press report on the paper in ThePrint gives the larger figures: overall fitness down 27%, mortality up by as much as 138% across the studies, and predators working more than 150% harder to hunt while catching about 25% less. The picture is not uniform. Some birds raised their parental care in noisier conditions, and some predators did better because their prey behaved differently.
Two cautions. The studies are experiments, so the numbers describe what added noise did under test conditions, not a count of wild animals lost. And the paper was not open to us: the 80% figure is in its abstract, while the mortality and fitness figures come from the press report.
