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March 27, 2012

Noise Pollution Is Changing Forests

A few years ago, researchers discovered that in areas polluted by human-made noise, a species of hummingbird seemed to increase in population, while a jay species seemed to decrease.

The same researchers now report that noisy areas have more flowers, but fewer trees. The findings appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

It’s a domino effect, said Clinton D. Francis, an evolutionary ecologist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C.

Pinyon pine trees rely on scrub jays to disperse their seeds, he said. And black-chinned hummingbirds, which pollinate flowers, seek out noisy areas to avoid the jays, which eat their eggs and even their nestlings.

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