The luxury effect beyond cities: bats respond to socioeconomic variation across landscapes

Abstract

BackgroundThe luxury effect describes the positive relationship between affluence and organism diversity or activity in urban ecosystems. Driven by human activities, the luxury effect can potentially be found at a broader scale across different landscapes. Previously, the luxury effect relationship has been established within a city for two bat species, the red bat (Lasiurus borealis) and the evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis). We examined landscape-scale patterns of bat activity distribution—using empirical data for seven bat species for the luxury effect. We also identified bat-land cover associations for each species. Across North Carolina, USA, we used the mobile transect survey protocol of the North American Monitoring Program to record bat activity at 43 sites from 2015 to 2018. We collected land cover and income data at our transect locations to construct generalized linear mixed models to identify bat-land cover and bat-income relationships.ResultsWe found that across landscapes, activity of the red bat and the evening bat was positively correlated to income independent of land cover, consistent with previous single-city results. We found a negative relationship between hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) activity and income. All seven species had specific land cover associations. Additionally, we found a positive interaction term between income and evergreen forest for the red bat and a positive interaction term between income and woody wetland for hoary bat.ConclusionsOur results demonstrated that the luxury effect is an ecological pattern that can be found at a broad spatial scale across different landscapes. We highlight the need for multi-scale ecology studies to identify the mechanism(s) underlying the luxury effect and that the luxury effect could cause inequity in how people receive the ecosystem services provided by bats.

Foraging habitat drives the distribution of an endangered bat in an urbanizing boreal landscape

“…Although our findings may be broadly applicable to other urbanizing landscapes in the boreal forest because of our mechanistic approach, our study is from a single urban area. Similar data from other urbanizing landscapes in the boreal forest area would be informative (Li et al 2019). Our study suggests that waterbodies and mature forests should be secured through stewardship agreements with land owners and protected within urban and regional land‐use plans.…”

Wealth and urbanization shape medium and large terrestrial mammal communities

“…Lower‐income neighborhoods, for example, can be characterized by modified vegetative communities and associated disservices such as urban heating, which, in turn, can lead to depauperate or primarily invasive plant and animal communities (Larsen & Harlan, 2006, but see Berland et al, 2020). Conversely, wealthier neighborhoods often have more and better quality green space (Li et al, 2019; Rigolon, 2016; de Vries et al, 2020). Research on the luxury effect also often assumes that ‘financial wherewithal’ (Hope et al, 2003) is the mechanism underlying positive relationships between income and vegetation, biodiversity, or other forms of nature.…”

Four Years Continuous Monitoring Reveals Different Effects of Urban Constructed Wetlands on Bats

“…Wetlands have the ability to filter water and improve water quality [3,5], and water quality at these wetlands may not have been suitable for tricolored bats to forage preferred insect preys. Interestingly, in a broad scale analysis in the same region, the tricolored bat was found positively correlated to woody wetlands [77], suggesting there should be more studies on how the tricolored bat responds to both vegetation and water. For the hoary bat and the Mexican free-tailed bat, only the open wetland showed an effect.…”