Context The global benefits of increased renewable energy production may come at a cost to local biotic communities and even regional ecosystems. Wind energy developments, in particular, are known to cause bird and bat mortalities, and to fragment habitat for terrestrial vertebrates within developed project areas. Effects on species sensitive to wind turbines (and increased prevalence of species tolerant to this disturbance) might alter community-level patterns of occurrence, with potentially detrimental changes to wildlife habitat and ecosystem health. Aims The present study assessed whether wind energy developments produced downstream ecological costs. Specifically, community composition and diversity were compared between wind farms and nearby areas without energy development. Methods Traditional diversity measures and non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) were used to map ecological dissimilarity across four wind farms and five reference (control) areas in Southern California, USA. Key results Wind farms had more noise and road disturbance than sites without turbine installations. Noise and disturbance were correlated with reduced plant richness, particularly for endemic plant species and, conversely, with increased non-native plant richness. Animal communities at wind farms were less diverse, with fewer species and lower evenness relative to reference areas with minor or no disturbances. Wind farms had fewer rare and unique species and, for some species of avian predators, encounter rates were lower at wind farms. Conclusions Renewable wind energy may indeed cause shifts in local communities. Although wind farms still supported many of the same species found in natural areas, suggesting that renewable wind energy facilities can provide useable habitat for some wildlife, these communities were also less rich and diverse. Implications Non-native species were more prevalent at wind farms, which may then facilitate further invasions into surrounding habitats. In addition, reduced overall plant and predator diversity at wind farms, and lower encounter rates for specific taxa (particular birds), may significantly affect community structure and function.

Renewable forms of energy production can have major societal benefits including reduced carbon pollution and decreased dependence on fossil fuels but are not without associated costs. For example, habitat degradation at renewable energy production sites may affect the persistence of wildlife populations. We assessed the effects of wind farms in the San Gorgonio Wind Resource Area near Palm Springs, California, 2013–2015, on local populations of the side‐blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana). The side‐blotched lizard is a common and ubiquitous desert reptile that is a major consumer of invertebrates and, in turn, represents a key prey base for many avian, reptilian, and mammalian predators. We used spatially explicit capture‐recapture methods to compare a comprehensive set of population‐level vital signs (i.e., abundance, population growth rate, survival, recruitment, body condition, age structure, activity area size, movement rates) among populations at 4 wind farms and at 5 reference areas. Although our models indicate that wind facilities have a weak negative effect on side‐blotched lizard survival, our overall results suggest that wind farms do not substantially influence the demography or behavior of these small lizards. Population response to general anthropogenic disturbance (quantified as an index of road type and density) was more pronounced, with lower population growth rates, adult‐skewed age structure, and reduced body condition at highly disturbed wind farm and reference sites. We therefore conclude that wind‐power facilities can support healthy populations of side‐blotched lizards, indicating that wind energy development is compatible with a native Mojave Desert species. However, our results show that anthropogenic disturbance, as measured by the type and density of roadways, has a negative effect on lizard populations, and should be carefully planned whether associated with energy development or not. Our study demonstrates a methodological approach that can be applied to other species, including those with lower tolerances to disturbance, to measure their response to renewable energy development. © 2018 The Wildlife Society.

Patterns of body size evolution on islands provide compelling cases of rapid and dramatic phenotypic evolution in terrestrial vertebrates, yet debate remains over the relative roles of predation and resource availability in driving such evolution. We compared the morphology of five reptile species (four lizards, one snake) from Anaho Island, a desert island in Pyramid Lake, Nevada, and the nearby mainland, using museum and live‐caught animals. We also examined head‐shape allometries to make inferences about dietary shifts and recorded tail‐regeneration frequencies (in lizards) to examine predation intensity. Compared with mainland samples, two phyrnosomatid lizard species are larger on Anaho (Callisaurus draconoides and Sceloporus occidentalis), whereas the largest (S. uniformis) is not different on the island. Conversely, the teiid lizard Aspidoscelis tigris is smaller in body and head size on the island, and the pitviper Crotalus oreganus is especially diminutive on the island, with males and females 25 and 15% smaller, respectively. Our results appear consistent with the hypothesis that body size is related to resource availability. The change in body size of the two smaller phrynosomatids may be due to interference competition. The reduction in body and head size in A. tigris suggests a dietary shift, and the dramatic difference in C. oreganus is likely due to a switch in diet from mammals to lizards. Future work is needed to determine whether body size differences reflect genetic evolution or environmental differences in growth rates or resource use. Regardless, Anaho Island, although remarkably young (early Holocene), appears to harbour a unique community of reptiles with distinct morphologies and possibly divergent life histories.

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