Autumn Spring 100 1000 a000 100 100 100 80 80 lane 80 40 40 20 20 road 100 200 3

Question

Autumn Spring 100 1000 a000 100 100 100 80 80 lane 80 40 40 20 20 road 100 200 300 400 700 800 100 200 300 4 00 600 700 800 Distance from road (m) Oistance from road (m Fig 2. Relationship between distance from two disturbance stimuli (a road and a less busy lane) and habitat exploitation by pink-footed geese (measured by goose dropping density or goose-days at successive distances from these roads) in a uniformly distributed resource. Data are presented separately for (a) autumn and (b) spring. The mean measured escape flight distances (EFD) for different sized flocks (100, 1000 and 2000 individuals) are shown as vertical bars for respective seasons EFD How close geese allow people to get before they flee.

Explanation / Answer

The two most important patterns emerging from the graphs are as follows:

The first and the foremost important pattern that can be observed in these graphs is that the escape flight distances (EFD) decreases drastically with the change in seasons. The escape flight distance is the closest the geese allow the people to get before they flee. It can be observed in the graph that the EFD decreases during the spring than in the autumn. This happens because the spring coincides with the breeding season among pink-footed geese and the habitat exploitation during the breeding season drastically increases. The EFD during the spring for a 100 geese flock is almost double from spring to autumn from 125m to 250m. This can be observed even in the habitat exploitation by the geese in the same two localities which is also not constant throughout the seasons. Even at a distance of 125m from the lane and 250m from the road the habitat exploitation is maximum in spring compared to less than 40% exploitation during the autumn.

The second most prominent pattern emerging from these graphs is that the habitat exploitation by the pink-footed geese is more nearer to the less busy lane than it is near the crowded road. The roads are usually noisy with the constant vehicular movements whereas the lanes happen to be less crowded with low vehicular density. The geese prefer to drop farther as the human disturbances increase. Therefore it can be observed that during autumn at a distance of 150m from the road there is zero habitat exploitation whereas at the same distance from the lane the exploitation goes upto 20%. Similar pattern is observed throughout the distance as well as seasons.

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