Urbanisation tolerance and the loss of avian diversity

Sol, Daniel; González‐Lagos, César; Moreira, Darío; Maspons, Joan; Lapiedra, Oriol

doi:10.1111/ele.12297

Cited by 342 publications

(443 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…dietary components, foraging methods and foraging substrates; Table 3). Whilst this finding contrasts with a global comparison in which diet type was not significantly different between urban exploiters and avoiders (Sol et al, 2014), several more local studies have found that urbanized and non-urbanized species differ in their diet or foraging behavior (e.g. Blair, 1996;Kark et al, 2007).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

“…Notably, however, when taking into account the number of species within an assemblage, we found consistent evidence across each of our three functional diversity metrics that avian functional diversity is higher in cities than areas of natural habitat. At first sight this seems a remarkable result that is highly unexpected given the plethora of studies showing that urbanization acts as a strong filter of biotic communities favoring species with a particular set of ecological and life history traits (Blair, 1996;Evans et al, 2011;Sol et al, 2014;Fischer et al, 2015) and negative effects of urbanization on avian taxonomic and evolutionary diversity (e.g. Marzluff et al, 2001;Chace and Walsh, 2006;McKinney, 2008;Ibáñez-Álamo et al, 2016) the other two major components of biodiversity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…urban avoiders, and increased abundances of more tolerant species (Blair, 1996;Sol et al, 2014;Fischer et al, 2015). These shifts in community composition are non-random, with urban environments filtering species according to their ecological and life-history traits, for example, across numerous taxonomic groups, specialized species tend to respond negatively to urbanization (Clark et al, 2007;Evans et al, 2011;Sol et al, 2014). This filtering process occurs across all three stages of the biotic urbanization process, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Impacts of Urban Areas and Their Characteristics on Avian Functional Diversity

Hagen

Ibáñez‐Álamo

et al. 2017

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Urban development is rapidly expanding across the globe and is a major driver of environmental change. Despite considerable improvements in our understanding of how species richness responds to urbanization, there is still insufficient knowledge of how other measures of assemblage composition and structure respond to urban development. Functional diversity metrics provide a useful approach for quantifying ecological function. We compare avian functional diversity in 25 urban areas, located across the globe, with paired non-urban assemblages using a database of 27 functional traits that capture variation in resource use (amount and type of resources and how they are acquired) across the 529 species occurring across these assemblages. Using three standard functional diversity metrics (FD, MNTD, and convex hull) we quantify observed functional diversity and, using standardized effect sizes, how this diverges from that expected under random community assembly null models. We use regression trees to investigate whether human population density, amount of vegetation and city size (spatial extent of urban land), bio-region and use of semi-natural or agricultural assemblages as a baseline modulate the effect of urbanization on functional diversity. Our analyses suggest that observed functional diversity of urban avian assemblages is not consistently different from that of non-urban assemblages. After accounting for species richness avian functional diversity is higher in cities than areas of semi-natural habitat. This creates a paradox as species responses to urban development are determined by their ecological traits, which should generate assemblages clustered within a narrow range of trait space. Greater habitat diversity within cities compared to semi-natural areas dominated by a single habitat may enhance functional diversity in cities and explain this paradox. Regression trees further suggest that smaller urban areas, lower human population densities and increased vegetation all enhance the functional diversity of urban areas. A city's attributes can thus influence the functional diversity of its biological assemblages, and their associated ecological functions. This has important implications for the debate regarding how we should grow the world's cities whilst maintaining their ecological function.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Impacts of Urban Areas and Their Characteristics on Avian Functional Diversity

Hagen

Ibáñez‐Álamo

et al. 2017

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…It is widely recognized that urbanization can act as an ecological filter favoring certain species that are more urban tolerant (Williams et al, 2009;Silva et al, 2016), thus leading to differences in species compositions across urbanization gradients (e.g., for avian communities, Sol et al, 2014;Clucas and Marzluff, 2015). For instance, in such inter-specific context, the "cognitive buffer hypothesis" predicts that larger brained animals have higher adaptive abilities in novel and challenging environmental conditions such as urban habitats (Sol et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urbanization Is Associated with Divergence in Pace-of-Life in Great Tits

et al. 2017

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As an extension of the classic life history theory, the recently highlighted pace-of-life syndrome hypothesis predicts the coevolution of behavioral, physiological and life-history traits. For instance, bolder and shyer individuals do not only differ in personality profiles, but also in neuro-endocrinology and breeding patterns. While theory predicts that bolder (i.e., proactive), more aggressive individuals should colonize more rapidly urbanized habitats than shyer (i.e., reactive), less aggressive individuals, it is also predicted that across generations, adaptive selection processes could favor shyer individuals that are more sensitive to novel environmental cues. Here we compared two personality traits (handling aggression, exploration score in a novel environment), one physiological trait related to stress response (breath rate) and four breeding traits (lay date, clutch size, hatching success and fledging success) in a rural and an urban study population of Mediterranean great tits Parus major. Mixed models revealed strong phenotypic divergence between forest and city in most traits explored, in particular in personality, whereby urban great tits were more reactive to stress and faster explorers compared to rural birds (yet not more aggressive). Urban birds also laid smaller broods earlier in spring compared to their rural conspecifics, and city broods resulted in lower hatching success yet interestingly fledging success was similar. Nest-box centered measures of anthropogenic (artificial light, pedestrians, and cars) perturbation and resource abundance allowed us to go beyond the classical forest/city comparison by exploring the phenotypic variation across an urbanization gradient. This revealed that high urbanization in nest-box surroundings was associated overall with earlier breeding and smaller clutches, but also with faster breath rate, although these trends showed strong annual variation. Ongoing rapid urbanization and non-random gene flow between rural and urban great tits could both contribute to the high prevalence of bold breeders in the city. Our study suggests the existence of urban and rural great tit ecotypes with different pace-of-life, but also a finer-scale divergence along the degree of urbanization within the city. Future studies are required to determine whether this phenotypic variation at different spatiotemporal scales is adaptive and whether it has a genetic basis or results from phenotypic plasticity.

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“…While the detrimental effects of urbanisation (e.g., reduced diversity) have been extensively documented for terrestrial (Holway and Suarez 2006;Sol et al 2014;Knop 2016) and lotic systems (Roy et al 2003;Walters et al 2003), ponds have recently been found to follow a different trajectory. Although some studies have reported lower faunal diversity in urban ponds, reflecting management practices for purposes other than biodiversity (Noble and Hassall 2014), others have found urban ponds to support similar faunal diversity to ponds in non-urban settings (Hassall and Anderson 2015;Hill et al 2017a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community heterogeneity of aquatic macroinvertebrates in urban ponds at a multi-city scale

et al. 2018

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Purpose Urbanisation is a leading cause of biotic homogenisation in urban ecosystems. However, there has been little research examining the effect of urbanisation and biotic homogenisation on aquatic communities, and few studies have compared findings across different urban landscapes. We assessed the processes that structure aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity within five UK cities and characterise the heterogeneity of pond macroinvertebrate communities within and among urban areas. Methods A total of 132 ponds were sampled for invertebrates to characterise biological communities of ponds across five UK cities. Variation among sites within cities, and variation among urban settlements, was partitioned into components of beta diversity relating to turnover and nestedness.Results We recorded 337 macroinvertebrate taxa, and species turnover almost entirely accounted for the high beta-diversity recorded within each urban area and when all ponds were considered. A total of 40% of all macroinvertebrates recorded were unique to a particular urban settlement. In contrast to the homogenisation of terrestrial and lotic communities in urban landscapes reported in the literature, ponds support highly heterogeneous communities within and among urban settlements. Conclusions The high species turnover (species replacement) recorded in this study demonstrates that urban pond biodiversity conservation would be most 123Landscape Ecol (2018) 33:389-405 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0608-1 efficient at a landscape-scale, rather than at the individual ponds scale. Pond conservation practices need to consider the spatial organization of ecological communities (landscape-scale) to ensure that the maximum possible biodiversity can be protected.

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Urbanisation tolerance and the loss of avian diversity

Cited by 342 publications

References 53 publications

Impacts of Urban Areas and Their Characteristics on Avian Functional Diversity

Impacts of Urban Areas and Their Characteristics on Avian Functional Diversity

Urbanization Is Associated with Divergence in Pace-of-Life in Great Tits

Community heterogeneity of aquatic macroinvertebrates in urban ponds at a multi-city scale

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