Effects of Urbanization on Native Bird Species in Three Southwestern US Cities

Abstract

Urbanization presents novel challenges to native species by altering both the biotic and abiotic environment. Studies have attempted to make generalizations about how species with similar traits respond to urbanization, although existing results are idiosyncratic across cities and often fail to account for seasonality. Here, we present a comparative study in three US cities: Fresno, California; Tucson, Arizona; and Phoenix, Arizona. Using presence-absence data to define regional bird species pools and urban assemblages in non-breeding (winter) and breeding (spring) seasons, we tested whether urban avian assemblages were a random subset of regional assemblages on the basis of both traits and phylogeny, and whether urbanization was associated with homogenization among avian assemblages. We found evidence for non-random trait filtering into urban assemblages, including of diet guilds, migratory status, and primary habitat, but filtering differed across cities and seasons, being strongest for diet and in Fresno. There was no evidence for non-random phylogenetic-based filtering in urban avian assemblages. Dissimilarity in species and diet guild composition within each season was higher between cities than between regional species pools. These findings show the potential for biotic differentiation as opposed to homogenization as the outcome of environmental filtering processes operating on species traits across cities and seasons.

The effect of habitat changes along the urbanization gradient for breeding birds: an example from the Xiong’an New Area

“…In regard to breeding bird individual density, a consistent decrease occurs (Tratalos et al, 2007). Urbanization could exert large influences on breeding bird populations through the destroy of nest sites and the eliminating of food resources (Han et al, 2019; Hensley et al, 2019). Additional gradient studies have revealed that along an urbanization gradient, avian species richness peaks in moderately urbanized areas (Blair, 1999; Jokimaki & Suhonen, 1993; Pal et al, 2019; Verma & Das Murmu, 2015), which is the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (Connell, 1978), while a recent study suggested that it depends on the end of the gradient and biome (Filloy, Andres Zurita & Isabel Bellocq, 2019).…”

Human–Wildlife Conflicts in Krakow City, Southern Poland

“…By the provision of profitable food and shelter, they create potential habitats for numerous vertebrate animals, mainly birds and mammals [17,78]. This is particularly observed in the case of avifauna, which according to several studies shows increased species richness and densities in city environments [17,79,80]. For example, it was [81] reported report that 20% out of 10,052 global bird species were recorded in the cities spread all over the world.…”

“…The availability of food is a prime factor that enhances the survival of birds in the cities [31,79]. In Poland, it can be observed that in winter season, almost twice higher densities of birds are observed in urban compared to rural habitats [84].…”

Socioeconomic variation across multiple cities predicts avian life-history strategies

“…There is now considerable evidence from both birds and mammals suggesting that cities filter for subsets of local species that have traits suited to population persistence in urban environments (Chace & Walsh 2006; Kark et al 2007; Croci et al 2008; Leveau 2013; Meffert & Dziock 2013; Meillère et al 2015; Aronson et al 2016; Silva et al 2016; Jokimäki et al 2016; Alberti et al 2017; Leveau et al 2017; Sepp et al 2018; Santini et al 2019; Hensley et al 2019). Relative to non-urban species, successful urban colonizers tend to have larger body masses, bigger brains and be tolerant of a broad range of environments (Bonier et al 2007; Croci et al 2008; Maklakova et al 2011; Lowry et al 2013; Iglesias-Carrasco et al 2019).…”

“…Much of this previous work has focused on urban–rural species trait comparisons that treat different cities as homogeneous with respect to the features of species that can colonize them. However, it is notable that in instances where species filtering has been explored across multiple cities different cities seem to filter for slightly different subsets of traits (Hensley et al 2019). This finding suggests that different cities may be suited to different life-history strategies.…”