Identifying Common Patterns in Diverse Systems: Effects of Exurban Development on Birds of the Adirondack Park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, USA

Abstract

We examined the impacts of exurban development on bird communities in Essex County, New York and Madison County, Montana by comparing differences in abundance of songbirds between subdivisions and control sites in both regions. We hypothesized that impacts to bird communities would be greater in the relatively homogeneous, closed canopy Adirondack forest of northern New York State than they would be in the more naturally heterogeneous grasslands interspersed with trees and shrubs of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We examined birds in five functional groups expected to be responsive to exurban development, and determined relative abundance within subdivisions and control sites across these two distinct regions. We found little support for our hypothesis. For birds in the area-sensitive, low nesting, and Neotropical migrant functional groups, relative abundance was lower in subdivisions in the Adirondacks and in Madison County, while relative abundance of edge specialists was greater in subdivisions in both regions. The direction and magnitude of change in the avian communities between subdivisions and controls was similar in both regions for all guilds except microhabitat specialists. These similarities across diverse ecosystems suggest that the ecological context of the encompassing region may be less important than other elements in shaping avian communities in exurban systems. This finding suggests that humans and their specific behaviors and activities in exurban areas may be underappreciated but potentially important drivers of change in these regions.

Does Exurban Housing Development Affect the Physiological Condition of Forest-Breeding Songbirds? A Case Study of Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapillus) in the Largest Protected Area in the Contiguous United States

“…Exurban homes in the Adirondacks have been shown to cause significant shifts in bird community structure, usually with generalist and edge species increasing in abundance at the expense of more sensitive, forest interior species (Glennon and Kretser 2013;Glennon et al 2014). Similar responses of bird communities to exurban housing development have been observed in California (Merenlender et al 2009), Montana (Glennon et al 2014), New England (Kluza et al 2000), the mid-Atlantic (Suarez-Rubio et al 2013), and elsewhere across the United States (Wood et al 2014). However, while many species are displaced by the construction of a new home, some species that are typically considered to be sensitive to forest fragmentation and anthropogenic disturbance-such as our model organism, the ovenbird (Porneluzi et al 2011)-will often remain in the wake of the development and continue to inhabit the area (Kluza et al 2000;Glennon and Kretser 2013).…”

“…The houses around which we captured ovenbirds are located within five areas zoned for low-density residential subdivision, and we treated each house as an independent unit because of the large degree of variation in parcel size, house size, lawn size (and other measures of landscaping intensity), levels of human activity (e.g., full-time vs. part-time residents), and other characteristics among properties. For comparison to ovenbirds nesting near houses, we captured ovenbirds at six reference areas also used by Glennon and Kretser (2013) and Glennon et al (2014) that are undeveloped, have low levels of human activity, and are protected as New York State Forest Preserve lands. Reference areas were chosen by identifying the closest areas of accessible undeveloped land of the same habitat type as the housing sites and of sufficient size to contain interior forest far from houses and roads.…”

“…We captured ovenbirds opportunistically at a subset of the houses currently included in an ongoing, separate study of the ecological and sociological mechanisms underlying the effects of exurban development on bird and mammal community composition in the Adirondack Park (National Science Foundation BSC-1060505; also see Glennon et al 2014). These houses were originally selected on the basis of having lot sizes of 2-40 acres (a common definition of exurban [Theobald 2001[Theobald , 2005), appropriate surrounding habitat for the study species (mature hardwood or mixed forest), landowner permission to access the property, and the presence of potential reference areas nearby.…”

“…An animal's physiological condition is critical to its fitness and survival and can provide sensitive signals of change in habitat quality (Wikelski and Cooke 2006;Cooke et al 2013). Exurban homes in the Adirondacks have been shown to cause significant shifts in bird community structure, usually with generalist and edge species increasing in abundance at the expense of more sensitive, forest interior species (Glennon and Kretser 2013;Glennon et al 2014). Similar responses of bird communities to exurban housing development have been observed in California (Merenlender et al 2009), Montana (Glennon et al 2014), New England (Kluza et al 2000), the mid-Atlantic (Suarez-Rubio et al 2013), and elsewhere across the United States (Wood et al 2014).…”

Exurbia East and West: Responses of Bird Communities to Low Density Residential Development in Two North American Regions

“…George and Dobkin [44] suggested that avian populations in parts of the Western US have contended with natural heterogeneity for thousands of years and may be less affected by fragmentation processes such as exurban development than avian populations of the relatively more homogeneous landscapes of the pre-European-settlement Eastern US. We previously examined changes in breeding bird community structure in exurban subdivisions and control areas between the Adirondack Park in northern NY and the Madison Valley, MT of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) [45] and predicted that, given its greater landscape structural diversity, the GYE would be less sensitive and demonstrate fewer changes to bird communities as a result of exurban development than would the Adirondacks. Despite our predictions, we found similar responses to development among several avian guilds across these distinct regions.…”