rhamphotheca:

Man Made Noise Has Ripple Effects on Plants, As Well as Animals

by PhysOrg staff

A growing body of research shows that birds and other animals change their behavior in response to manmade noise, such as the din of traffic or the hum of machinery. But human clamor doesn’t just affect animals. Because many animals also pollinate plants or eat or disperse their seeds, human noise can have ripple effects on plants too, finds a new study.

In cases where noise has ripple effects on long-lived plants like trees, the consequences could last for decades, even after the source of the noise goes away, says lead author Clinton Francis of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina. The study appears in the March 21 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

In previous studies, Francis and colleagues found that some animals increase in numbers near noisy sites, while others decline. But could animals’ different responses to man-made noise have indirect effects on plants, too? Because they can’t move, many plants rely on birds and other animals to deliver pollen from one flower to the next, or to disperse their seeds.

To find out what animal responses to noise might mean for plants, the researchers conducted a series of experiments from 2007 to 2010 in the Bureau of Land Management’s Rattlesnake Canyon Wildlife Area. The region is home to thousands of natural gas wells, many of which are coupled with noisy compressors for extracting the gas and transporting it through pipelines. The compressors roar and rumble day and night, every day of the year…

(read more: PhysOrg)     (photos: L - Clinton Francis, R - Msulis)

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More information: Francis, C., N. Kleist, et al. (2012). “Noise pollution alters ecological services: enhanced pollination and disrupted seed dispersal.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Provided by National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)