RUI: Effects of Traffic Noise on Avian Cognition

人为噪音污染是许多景观中普遍存在的特征，并已被证明对生态和动物行为产生各种负面影响。最近的研究表明，噪音污染也会影响动物学习解决问题的能力。该奖项考察了噪音污染影响动物认知的机制，并将有助于确定生活在嘈杂栖息地（例如，高速公路或繁忙城市附近）的动物是否能够克服这些噪声源对其认知表现的负面影响。这项研究将提供关于动物如何应对不断变化的环境条件的一般性见解，并将对动物种群的保护产生关键影响。噪音对人类认知功能的类似负面影响也被提出，更好地理解这种关系也可能直接应用于人类社会的福利。该奖项将为主要为本科生和少数族裔服务的机构提供关键的基础设施和研究能力，直接为本科生提供大量获得实践研究经验的机会，这将有助于支持他们未来的科学事业，特别是那些传统上在STEM领域代表性不足的群体。人为噪音对动物的生理、行为、种群和社区有许多有害的影响。最近的一项研究表明，一种人工饲养的鸣禽对认知功能有进一步的负面影响，但这种现象很少被研究，驱动这种关系的机制尚不清楚。这项研究的目的是确定交通噪音是否同样影响其他鸣禽物种的认知能力，以及在环境中经常遇到噪音污染的动物是否会继续经历与naïve个体相同水平的认知能力下降。这项研究将暴露鸟类觅食任务，旨在测量动物认知的各个方面（例如，抑制控制，运动学习，联想学习，空间记忆等）在不同的道路交通噪音制度。本研究将通过研究交通噪音暴露的不同类型和持续时间如何影响在严格控制的实验室条件下饲养的鸟类的认知表现，确定之前的研究结果是否适用于野生鸣禽物种，并确定噪音是否对那些生活在更容易暴露于噪音污染的野生种群的动物产生不同的影响，从而取得若干进展。该奖项的结果将阐明驱动噪音诱导认知抑制的机制，对认知科学，动物行为，城市生态学和保护具有重要意义。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Human-derived noise pollution is a ubiquitous feature of many landscapes and has been shown to have a variety of negative effects on the ecology and behavior of animals. Recent research indicates that noise pollution could also affect how well animals learn to solve problems. This award examines the mechanism through which noise pollution affects animal cognition and will help determine whether animals living in noisy habitats (e.g., near highways or busy cities) can overcome the negative impacts of these noise sources on their cognitive performance. This research will provide generalizable insights about how animals respond to changing environmental conditions and will have key implications for the conservation of animal populations. With similar negative effects of noise on cognitive function also proposed for humans, better understanding this relationship will also likely have direct application to the welfare of human societies. The award will provide key infrastructure and research capability at a primarily undergraduate and minority-serving institution, leading directly to numerous opportunities for undergraduate students to gain hands-on research experiences that will help support their future careers in science, especially from groups who have traditionally been underrepresented in STEM fields. Anthropogenic noise has a number of detrimental impacts on animal physiology, behavior, populations, and communities. A recent study demonstrated further negative effects on cognitive function in one species of captive-raised songbird, but this phenomenon has been little studied and the mechanisms driving this relationship are unknown. The goal of this research is to determine whether traffic noise similarly impacts cognition in other songbird species and whether animals that regularly encounter noise pollution in their environment continue to experience the same level of reduced cognitive performance as naïve individuals. This research will expose birds to foraging tasks designed to measure a variety of aspects of animal cognition (e.g., inhibitory control, motor learning, associative learning, spatial memory, etc.) under varying road traffic noise regimes. This research will make several advances by examining how varying the type and duration of traffic noise exposure impacts cognitive performance in birds held under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, determining whether previous findings extend to wild songbird species, and establish whether noise differentially affects those animals living in wild populations that are more exposed to noise pollution. The results of this award will shed light on the mechanisms driving noise-induced cognitive inhibition, with implications for cognitive science, animal behavior, urban ecology, and conservation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.