Fear Effects on Pheasant Reproductive Ecology and a Curriculum to Teach Wildlife Habitat Selection

Predator-prey interactions elicit shifts in prey behavior, physiology and lifehistory that can impact prey population dynamics and community structure to the same extent as prey consumption (Turner and Mittelbach 1990, Ripple and Beschta 2004). An emerging body of literature addressing the ‘landscape of fear’ shows substantial immediate impacts of fear on prey hormone concentrations, body condition, behavior and reproductive investment (Scheurien et al. 2001, Pressier et al. 2005, Stankowich and Blumstein 2005, Zanette et al. 2011). However, predation risk is temporally variable (Chesson 1978b, Erlinge et al. 1984, Lima and Bednekoff 1999), and although seasonal increases in prey mortality carry over to constrain prey abundance after predators have moved on (Krebs et al. 1995, Abrams 2000), it remains unknown for how long and to what extent the effects of fear carry over to impact prey populations. We assessed the temporal carry-over effects of human hunting on reproduction in female ring-necked pheasants. Because harvest is limited to males, but both sexes experience similar cues indicative of risk, we were able to isolate the effects of fear from the selective effects of predation. We found that although hunting did not have prolonged effects on female survival, body condition or nest site choice, females on heavily hunted sites had elevated baseline corticosterone concentrations that were more sensitive to body condition such that birds in poor condition had disproportionately higher corticosterone concentrations on high risk sites. Furthermore, hunter activity caused females to produce 10% smaller eggs. Our results indicate that fear alone can carry over to impact prey physiology and