Noise from a phantom road experiment alters the age structure of a community of migrating birds

Several past studies have demonstrated the effects of anthropogenic noise on populations of animals. Yet, differing effects of noise by age and subsequent changes in the age structure of populations are poorly understood. We experimentally tested the effects of traffic noise alone on the age structure of a community of migrating birds at a fall stopover site in south‐western Idaho using an array of speakers – creating a phantom road – that replicated the sound of a roadway without other confounding aspects of roads. Both hatch‐year and adult birds were negatively affected by noise – having lower capture rates, lower body condition and lower stopover efficiency along the phantom road when the noise was on compared to control conditions. However, hatch‐year birds responded more strongly which lead to a significant shift in the ratio of hatch‐year to adult birds under noisy conditions. Our previous work using the phantom road demonstrated that traffic noise can degrade the quality of a stopover site by affecting the ability of migrating birds to gain body condition. Here, we demonstrate differences between age classes such that although noise degrades habitat for both hatch‐year and adult migrants, there are still differences in responses to noise between age groups. Despite alternative explanations of our results such as changes in behavior affecting capture likelihood, evidence suggests that younger birds avoided the phantom road more than adult birds perhaps because of different tradeoffs between foraging and predation risk and differing strategies of site selection during migration. Using a phantom road, we demonstrate experimentally that traffic noise alone can change the age structure of a community of migrating birds. We further show that the ability of both adult and hatch‐year birds to gain weight during stopover is negatively affected by anthropogenic noise, although the effect is stronger for young birds. Photo credit: Ashley Jensen.