title: American exceptionalism: population trends and flight initiation distances in birds from three continents.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  All organisms may be affected by humans' increasing impact on Earth, but there are many potential drivers of population trends and the relative importance of each remains largely unknown. The causes of spatial patterns in population trends and their relationship with animal responses to human proximity are even less known.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We investigated the relationship between population trends of 193 species of bird in North America, Australia and Europe and flight initiation distance (FID); the distance at which birds take flight when approached by a human. While there is an expected negative relationship between population trend and FID in Australia and Europe, we found the inverse relationship for North American birds; thus FID cannot be used as a universal predictor of vulnerability of birds. However, the analysis of the joint explanatory ability of multiple drivers (farmland breeding habitat, pole-most breeding latitude, migratory habit, FID) effects on population status replicated previously reported strong effects of farmland breeding habitat (an effect apparently driven mostly by European birds), as well as strong effects of FID, body size, migratory habit and continent. Farmland birds are generally declining.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Flight initiation distance is related to population trends in a way that differs among continents opening new research possibilities concerning the causes of geographic differences in patterns of anti-predator behavior.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unité Mixte de Recherche 8079, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.
authors.forename: Anders Pape
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Møller
authors.affiliation: Ecology and Evolution, Laboratory of Theoretical Ecology and Synthesis, Federal University of Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil.
authors.forename: Diogo S M
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Samia
authors.affiliation: Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering and the Built Environment, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Mike A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Weston
authors.affiliation: College of Engineering and Science, and Institute for Sustainability and Innovation, Victoria University, Footscray Park Campus, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Patrick-Jean
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Guay
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Daniel T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Blumstein
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D001717:Birds; D005060:Europe; D005426:Flight, Animal; D006801:Humans; D009656:North America; D011157:Population Dynamics