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From agriculture and urban land clearance to loss of habitat and feral animal predation, native wild animals and their food sources face a rising tide of threats caused by human activities.

in Ibis, led by Flinders University, warns traffic noise is one more pressure faced by one of southern Australia's rare songbirds, the threatened Southern Emu-wren (Stipiturus malachurus).

"Anthropogenic (human) noise has the potential to negatively impact wildlife by disrupting communication and reducing overall fitness. This includes the effects of traffic noise and other loud noises on the signaling behavior of this rather sedentary and territorial songbird," says Flinders BirdLab Ph.D. candidate Julian Behrens.

As part of his research across South Australia, he tested territory defense and traffic noise responses鈥攊ncluding varying song characteristics鈥攊n four subspecies of Southern Emu-wren from the Mount Lofty Ranges near Adelaide to the more remote Coorong, Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island regions.

"Our results add to a large body of evidence that the territorial defense behavior of songbirds can be altered by short-term traffic noise exposure," says Mr. Behrens, from the College of Science and Engineering.

Flinders University senior lecturer in animal behavior Dr. Diane Colombelli-N茅grel, director of the research group, says the study adds to data to help conserve threatened and rare species.

"Traffic noise not only affects birds' ability to communicate for mating, but also influences how they defend their territories, as changes in detection and response behavior can directly affect territorial outcomes," she says.

Meanwhile, senior co-author, Professor Sonia Kleindorfer, has expanded long-running research of bird life on the World Heritage-listed Gal谩pagos islands鈥攎ost recently examining how insect, spider, ants, worm and other invertebrate abundance and diversity varies greatly between national park areas and agricultural land.

Intensive land use, when coupled with climate change, is associated with a 50% decrease in invertebrate abundance and 27% reduction in species diversity. Previous studies also found remote islands may both be biodiversity hotspots but record the highest number of extinctions worldwide.

BirdLab founder Professor Kleindorfer, who now leads the Konrad Lorenz Research Center at the University of Vienna, has spent decades studying Australian native birds and birds of the Gal谩pagos archipelago, in particular the effects of invasive species, disease and parasitic attacks on the vulnerable Darwin's finch.

A study was led by Flinders Ph.D. and University of Vienna postdoctoral research Dr. Lauren Common, who joined experts from the Charles Darwin Foundation and others in 2022 to collect 15,437 specimens across 17 orders, from 320 samples at study sites on Floreana Island, Gal谩pagos.

"Invertebrate community structure, abundance and diversity clearly differed between agricultural land and national park sites, highlighting another aspect for conservation management priorities," says Dr. Common.

As well as animal species surveys, Professor Kleindorfer says this invertebrate analysis establishes a baseline to compare differences between protected and the human-modified agricultural sites.

"It also provides a comparison of the impact of the ecological restoration activities on Floreana Island, that include eradication of invasive species and reintroduction of locally extinct species," says Professor Kleindorfer.