Animals balance costs of antipredator behaviors with resource acquisition to minimize hunting and other mortality risks and maximize their physiological condition. This inherent trade-off between forage abundance, its quality, and mortality risk is intensified in human-dominated landscapes because fragmentation, habitat loss, and degradation of natural vegetation communities is often coupled with artificially enhanced vegetation (i.e., food plots), creating high-risk, high-reward resource selection decisions. Our goal was to evaluate autumn–winter resource selection trade-offs for an intensively hunted avian generalist. We hypothesized human access was a reliable cue for hunting predation risk. Therefore, we predicted resource selection patterns would be spatiotemporally dependent upon levels of access and associated perceived risk. Specifically, we evaluated resource selection of local-scale flights between diel periods for 426 mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) relative to wetland type, forage quality, and differing levels of human access across hunting and nonhunting seasons. Mallards selected areas that prohibited human access and generally avoided areas that allowed access diurnally, especially during the hunting season. Mallards compensated by selecting for high-energy and greater quality foraging patches on allowable human access areas nocturnally when they were devoid of hunters. Postseason selection across human access gradients did not return to prehunting levels immediately, perhaps suggesting a delayed response to reacclimate to nonhunted activities and thus agreeing with the assessment mismatch hypothesis. Last, wetland availability and human access constrained selection for optimal natural forage quality (i.e., seed biomass and forage productivity) diurnally during preseason and hunting season, respectively; however, mallards were freed from these constraints nocturnally during hunting season and postseason periods. Our results suggest risk-avoidance of human accessible (i.e., hunted) areas is a primary driver of resource selection behaviors by mallards and could be a local to landscape-level process influencing distributions, instead of forage abundance and quality, which has long-been assumed by waterfowl conservation planners in North America. Broadly, even an avian generalist, well adapted to anthropogenic landscapes, avoids areas where hunting and human access are allowed. Future conservation planning and implementation must consider management for recreational access (i.e., people) equally important as foraging habitat management for wintering waterfowl.

中文翻译：

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人类的进入限制了鸟类通才的最佳觅食和栖息地可用性

动物平衡反捕食行为的成本与资源获取，以最大限度地减少狩猎和其他死亡风险并最大限度地提高其生理状况。在人类主导的景观中，饲料丰富度、质量和死亡风险之间的固有权衡会加剧，因为自然植被群落的破碎、栖息地丧失和退化往往与人工增强的植被（即食物区）相结合，从而造成高-风险、高回报的资源选择决策。我们的目标是评估密集捕猎的鸟类通才的秋冬资源选择权衡。我们假设人类进入是狩猎捕食风险的可靠线索。因此，我们预测资源选择模式将在时空上取决于访问级别和相关的感知风险。具体来说，我们评估了 426 只绿头鸭 ( Anas platyrhynchos )昼夜期间局部规模飞行的资源选择，涉及湿地类型、饲料质量以及狩猎和非狩猎季节不同的人类进入水平。野鸭选择禁止人类进入的区域，并且通常避开白天允许进入的区域，尤其是在狩猎季节。当野鸭没有猎人时，它们会在夜间允许人类进入的区域选择高能量和更高质量的觅食区域来进行补偿。跨人类进入梯度的季后赛选择并没有立即恢复到狩猎前的水平，这可能表明重新适应非狩猎活动的延迟反应，从而同意评估不匹配假设。最后，湿地可用性和人类进入分别限制了季前赛和狩猎季节的最佳天然饲料质量（即种子生物量和饲料生产率）的选择；然而，野鸭在狩猎季节和季后赛期间的夜间活动不受这些限制。我们的研究结果表明，人类可进入（即狩猎）区域的风险规避是野鸭资源选择行为的主要驱动力，并且可能是影响分布的局部到景观水平的过程，而不是长期以来一直被认为是饲料丰度和质量的因素。北美水禽保护规划者假设。一般来说，即使是非常适应人类景观的鸟类通才，也会避开允许狩猎和人类进入的区域。未来的保护规划和实施必须考虑对娱乐通道（即人）的管理与对越冬水禽的觅食栖息地管理同样重要。