Colonization and habitat selection of a declining farmland species in urban areas
- PDF / 1,702,706 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 54 Downloads / 201 Views
Colonization and habitat selection of a declining farmland species in urban areas Martin Mayer 1
&
Peter Sunde 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Despite the accelerating global urbanization and its associated implications for wildlife and humans, we know little about the biology of urban ecosystems. Here, we investigated colonization and habitat selection of the European hare (Lepus europaeus), a declining farmland species, in urban areas in Denmark, using a combination of citizen science data and transect counts. Further, we estimated the population density of urban hares in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. Our results provide the first evidence that hares have established populations in urban areas, potentially in response to decreasing habitat quality in rural areas due to agricultural intensification. The hare density in Aarhus was ca. 8 hares per km2, which is comparable to or slightly higher than hare abundance estimates from various pastural areas in Europe, suggesting that urban areas provide suitable habitat for hares. Hare habitat selection was generally associated with areas consisting of large lawns, such as high buildings and parks, which potentially provide high-quality forage throughout the year. Considering the increasing expansion of urban areas and deteriorating habitat quality of agricultural areas, urban planning that incorporates habitat requirements for wildlife could help to support urban animal populations, especially for species of conservation concern. Keywords Citizen science . European hare . Habitat selection . Lepus europaeus . Synurbanization
Introduction Urbanization increases globally and is a major driver of environmental change (Grimm et al. 2008). For example, the majority of carbon emissions, residential water use, and industrial timber use are attributed to cities (Brown 2001), negatively affecting ecosystems globally. Many animal populations go extinct in built-up areas, because they are not able to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions (McKinney 2006). However, urban areas can constitute habitat for various wildlife populations that were previously restricted to rural environments (Ditchkoff et al. 2006). In fact, population densities of some species can be higher in urban compared to surrounding agricultural areas, e.g. due to increased food availability and thermal shelter, as shown for hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) (Hubert et al. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-00943-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Martin Mayer [email protected] 1
Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Grenåvej 14, 8410 Rønde, Denmark
2011). The process of urban colonization and adjustment of animal populations to specific conditions of the urban environment is defined as synurbanization (Luniak 2004). Although there is an increasing research focus on urban environments (Magle et al. 2012), we still know little abo
Data Loading...
