空气污染对信鸽比赛个体归巢速度的影响

Effects of Air Pollution on Individual Performance in Homing Pigeon

空气污染作为一种有害的环境因素,对人类及动物的生理、心理均有影响。在鸟类中,信鸽(Columba livia)是研究空气污染影响的理想模型。为探究空气污染的行为学效应,通过收集并筛选2018和2019年成都市信鸽协会春秋两个季节举办的64场赛事共285羽参赛5场及以上的信鸽不同空距等级下的归巢速度,利用混合线性模型分析了6种大气污染物(CO、NO_(2)、O_(3)、PM_(2.5)、PM_(10)、SO_(2))及气温、季节、天气等环境因子对信鸽归巢速度的影响。结果表明,PM_(10)、SO_(2)、NO_(2)、O_(3)浓度与归巢速度间有显著正相关关系,即这些空气污染物浓度越高,信鸽归巢速度越快;而CO浓度与归巢速度显著负相关,即CO浓度越高,信鸽归巢速度越慢。通过模型评估及比较,发现O3模型是归巢速度的最佳拟合模型,其次是NO2模型。本研究表明,信鸽的归巢速度的确受到空气污染的影响,但潜在的影响机制如归巢动机假说和嗅觉强化假说仍需进一步研究。

As a harmful environmental factor,air pollution has negative effects on human beings and animals both physically and psychologically.Homing pigeons(Columba livia)are ideal models for studying the pollution effects on birds.In order to explore the impact of air pollution on animals,we used a mixed linear model to analyze the effects of six air pollutants(CO,NO_(2),O_(3),PM_(2.5),PM_(10),SO_(2))and environmental factors including temperature,season and weather(Table 1)on homing speed and homing time of 285 homing pigeons,participating 64 games held by Chengdu Homing Pigeon Association during the spring and autumn from 2018 and 2019.Every pigeon participated at least 5 races under three levels of distance.The results showed that the concentrations of PM_(10),SO_(2),NO_(2) and O_(3) were positively correlated with the homing speed,whereas concentration of CO was negatively correlated with it(Fig.1).O_(3) model is the optimal fit model of homing speed,followed by NO_(2) model(Table 2 and 3).Our study suggests that homing speed of homing pigeons is indeed affected by air pollution,but the underlying mechanisms including homing motivation hypothesis and olfactory navigation enhancement hypothesis need further studies.