Heather Kenny

Noise pollution from human activities such as vehicle traffic is becoming increasingly common and is known to impact wildlife species near sources of noise. Animals such as songbirds that rely heavily on vocal communication can be disturbed by noise because it masks vocal signals between individuals and makes it harder to hear approaching predators. Some songbird species are able to coexist with human disturbance, but it is likely that certain individuals in the population are better suited to noisy environments than others. Individuals vary in their expression of behavioral traits, and the behaviors of an individual are sometimes grouped into defined bold and shy “personality types”. This study investigates whether wild eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) exhibit strong personality types, and whether individuals with certain behaviors tend to sort into noisy and quiet locations. Our preliminary results show that the traits of aggression and neophobia (fear of a novel object) are not correlated within bluebird individuals, and these birds cannot be classified as bold or shy across these two traits combined. We also found a trend for more neophobic birds to occur at louder nest boxes. Further research will help determine whether neophobic birds prefer noisy sites, or whether they are being excluded from the more preferred quiet sites and thus end up in the noisier sites. This is important to investigate because if populations in noisy areas become dominated by neophobic birds, it could lead to emergent effects on population and community level processes.

Heather Kenny is a second-year M.S. candidate in the Biology Department at William & Mary. She is interested in animal behavior, and her research focuses on the ecological importance of animal personality and individual variation. Her thesis project investigates the behavioral responses of bold and shy eastern bluebirds to noise pollution.