Revue d’Ecologie (Terre et Vie), Vol. 73 (3), 2018: 375-384

375 FLIGHT INITIATION DISTANCES IN RELATION TO PEDESTRIAN AND BOAT DISTURBANCE IN FIVE SPECIES OF WADERS BREEDING IN A MEDITERRANEAN LAGOON

___ It is widely recognised that disturbance caused by anthropogenic activities may disrupt bird behaviour, and above a certain threshold, they may prevent birds from using otherwise suitable places (Días et al., 2008; Weston et al., 2012; Schlacher et al., 2013; Collop et al., 2016). The effects are evident among waterbirds, and waders in particular, since intense and widespread human activities take place in most wetlands. Hunting, fishing, shell fishing, bait collecting, boat traffic, and birdwatching are among the most common of man-made activities causing disturbance to waders using coastal wetlands (e. g. Días et al., 2008; Glover et al., 2015). In the present paper, I use Nisbet’s (2000) definition of human disturbance described as ‘ any human activity that changes the contemporaneous behaviour or physiology of one or more individuals’. Thus, other forms of landscape-level, man-made disturbances, such as land reclamation, urbanisation, land cover change, and fragmentation, which historically take place in Mediterranean wetlands (Malavasi et al., 2009), are also of great importance in shaping bird communities, but will not be considered here.