因噪音污染嚴重 鳥兒求偶需加大分貝

Change of tune: Research has revealed male great tits are having to sing at higher frequencies to make themselves heard, but unfortunately for them this makes them less attractive to the opposite sex It's not just humans that struggle to make themselves heard with the opposite sex in a city. Research has revealed male birds are also having to change their tune in a bid to find a mate. Scientists have found that male great tits are being forced to sing at higher frequencies to drown out the constant urban din of modern life.
　　電視上五花八門的相親節目在刺激着城市中諸多剩男剩女的神經末梢，也許我們並沒有意識到除了我們自己，和我們一同生活在一個領域的動物也需要“相親”。隨着城市化的道路愈發明顯，城市獨有的污染也伴隨而來，比如光污染、水污染以及聲污染等等，這些城市弊病不僅危害着我們的健康，就連和我們一同生活在一個領域的動物，比如鳥兒也受到不良影響。據悉，研究者發現，生活在城市中的雄性鳥類在對雌性鳥類發出“求偶信號”時，必須發出聲頻“更高、更尖”的叫聲、或者改變聲調爲了讓自己愛的雌性鳥兒聽到。有意思的是，這一現象與如今城市中的“剩男”增多現象有異曲同工之妙。

But this is seen by the females as less attractive, and so those that sing at this pitch as well as those that cannot make their low-frequency songs heard are at risk of not finding a special feathered 'friend'. Wouter Halfwerk, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, carried out the research. His team recorded the communication between male and female great tits in a Dutch national park between April and May 2009 and 2010. They analysed the paternity of chicks and played the female birds recordings of male songs with different levels of background noise.

儘管城市裏的雄性鳥兒用“如此高昂”的聲調來向自己心愛的異性求愛，然而我們的異性鳥兒卻對這樣的求愛方式不是十分感冒。來自荷蘭的研究專家Wouter Halfwerk記錄了在荷蘭國家公園2009年和2010年4月到5月間，雄鳥和雌鳥之間的互動情況，他們將不同噪音情況下的雄性鳥兒的聲音錄下來，觀看雌性鳥兒的反映。

And they found that the birds that sang low-frequency songs were less likely to be cuckolded. He told the Telegraph: 'These data are critical for our understanding of the impact of anthropogenic noise on wild-ranging birds. 'This is because they provide evidence for low-frequency songs being linked to reproductive success and to be affected by noise-dependent signal efficiency.'

他們發現，那些唱着低頻聲調歌曲的鳥兒成功求偶機率相當低，專家說：“這些數據對我們瞭解城市中噪音對動物影響情況十分十分重要，給我們鳥類生殖、繁衍所需要的環境情況提供了許多依據和重要數據。”