In a study with a common songbird, the European robin, we investigated the role of urban acoustic noise in aggression and territorial communication. Animals living in urban areas often tend to be more aggressive than those living in rural areas, which may be due to urban acoustic noise making communication between individuals more difficult. Human activity has an enormous effect on wildlife, including on their social behavior. These results point to a complex role of immediate plasticity and longer-term processes in affecting communication during aggressive interactions under anthropogenic noise. Contrary to the multi-modal shift hypothesis, however, there was no evidence of a concurrent increase in visual signals. Urban but not rural birds decreased their song rate in response to noise. The results showed that urban birds were more aggressive than rural robins, but an increase in aggression with experimental noise was seen only in the rural birds. Finally, we expected the multi-modal shift in response to noise to be stronger in urban birds compared to rural birds. We also predicted that during simulated intrusions with experimental noise, robins would increase their physical aggression and show a multi-modal shift, i.e., respond with more visual threat displays and sing fewer songs. First, we predicted that urban birds, living in noisier habitats, would be generally more aggressive than rural birds. In the present study, we investigate aggressive behaviors and signaling in urban and rural male European robins ( Erithacus rubecula) in response to simulated intrusions with or without experimental noise. One solution to this problem is to switch signaling effort to a less noisy modality (e.g., the visual modality). Anthropogenic noise may disrupt signals used to mediate aggressive interactions, leading to more physical aggression between opponents.
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