Basak, Sayantani M.O'Mahony, DeclanLesiak, MaciejBasak, Arpan KumarZiolkowska, ElzbietaKaim, DominikHossain, Md SarwarWierzbowska, Izabela A.2022-07-112022-07-112022-05-09Basak, S.M., O’Mahony, D.T., Lesiak, M., Basak, A.K., Ziółkowska, E., Kaim, D., Hossain, M.S. and Wierzbowska, I.A. (2022) ‘Animal-vehicle collisions during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020 in the Krakow metropolitan region, Poland’, Scientific Reports. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-11526-9.2045-2322https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11526-9Publication history: Accepted - 11 April 2022; Published online - 9 May 2022The interrelations between human activity and animal populations are of increasing interest due to the emergence of the novel COVID-19 and the consequent pandemic across the world. Anthropogenic impacts of the pandemic on animals in urban-suburban environments are largely unknown. In this study, the temporal and spatial patterns of urban animal response to the COVID-19 lockdown were assessed using animal-vehicle collisions (AVC) data. We collected AVC data over two 6-month periods in 2019 and 2020 (January to June) from the largest metropolis in southern Poland, which included lockdown months. Furthermore, we used traffic data to understand the impact of lockdown on AVC in the urban area. Our analysis of 1063 AVC incidents revealed that COVID-19 related lockdown decreased AVC rates in suburban areas. However, in the urban area, even though traffic volume had significantly reduced, AVC did not decrease significantly, suggesting that lockdown did not influence the collision rates in the urban area. Our results suggest that there is a need to focus on understanding the effects of changes in traffic volume on both human behaviour and wildlife space use on the resulting impacts on AVC in the urban area.enOpen Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.EcologyEnvironmental sciencesArticle