Investigating impacts of and susceptibility to rail noise playback across freshwater fishes reveals counterintuitive response profiles

Abstract

Abstract While the expansion of anthropogenic noise studies in aquatic habitats has produced conservation-based results for a range of taxa, relatively little attention has been paid to the potential impacts on stream fishes. Recent work has shown responses to road noise in single species of stream fish; however, assemblage-wide effects of anthropogenic noise pollution have not yet been investigated. By examining five metrics of disturbance across four ecologically and evolutionarily disparate species of stream fishes, a series of laboratory experiments aimed to describe the effects of and species susceptibility to anthropogenic noise playback. Each species studied represented a unique combination of hearing sensitivity and water column position. Physiological and behavioral metrics were compared across the presence and absence of rail-noise noise playback in four target species. Through repeated subsampling, the temporal dynamics of cortisol secretion in response to noise in two target species were additionally described. Rail-noise playback had no statistically significant effect on blood glucose or water-borne cortisol levels, with the exception of decreased cortisol in noise-exposed largescale stoneroller (Campostoma oligolepis). Time-course cortisol experiments revealed rapid secretion and showed minimal effects of noise at most observation points. The presence of noise produced significant changes in ventilation rate and swimming parameters in a portion of the four species observed representing the most conserved responses. Overall, effects of noise were observed in species contrary to what would be hypothesized based on theoretical hearing sensitivity and water column position demonstrating that predicting susceptibility to this type of stressor cannot be accomplished based off these course considerations alone. More importantly, we show that anthropogenic noise can disrupt a variety of behavioral and physiological processes in certain taxa and should be further investigated via measures of fitness in the wild.