The influence of urbanisation on diversity and trait composition of birds
- PDF / 645,262 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 12 Downloads / 169 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
The influence of urbanisation on diversity and trait composition of birds Peter J. Meffert • Frank Dziock
Received: 24 November 2011 / Accepted: 1 March 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract We analysed the effect of the urban matrix, the urban space surrounding distinct habitat patches, on bird communities. In doing so we assessed the impact of urbanisation beyond the effect of habitat loss. We used a set of 54 wasteland sites of early successional stages that were scattered over the entire urban area of Berlin, Germany. Sites were similar to each other in habitat structure but differed in their surroundings, the urban matrix. Thus, our study design allows to investigate associations between birds and the urban matrix. Our measures for urbanisation are human population density and degree of sealing within 50 to 2,000 m buffer zones surrounding each wasteland site. Along the urbanisation gradients we calculated three measures of bird communities: alpha
P. J. Meffert (&) Section Study of Health in Pomerania – ClinicalEpidemiological Research, Institute for Community Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, WaltherRathenau-Straße 48, 17475 Greifswald, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Present Address: P. J. Meffert Dostojewskistr. 1 a, 17491 Greifswald, Germany F. Dziock Chair of Animal and Applied Ecology, Faculty of Agriculture/Landscape Management, University of Applied Sciences HTW Dresden, Pillnitzer Platz 2, 01326 Dresden, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
diversity, beta diversity, and trait profile of the entire bird community regarding food, life-history, and behavioural traits. Alpha diversity did not change significantly along the gradients of urbanisation. However, beta diversity increased along the urbanisation gradients with urbanisation at the local scale (50 m) but decreased at the landscape scale (200 and 2,000 m). Fourth-corner analysis of relationships between urbanisation and species traits showed trait shifts: adult survival rate increased with human population density and densities of birds that are more often reported to show innovative behaviour increased with both human population density and degree of sealing. We conclude that the influence of the urban matrix contributes to the homogenisation of the avifauna by filtering certain species traits and promoting others. Keywords Urbanisation Fourth-corner analysis Biotic homogenisation Urban matrix Community assembly
Introduction Urbanisation is rapidly changing our world’s face, reducing native habitats (Wackernagel and Rees 1996; Benfield et al. 1999; Czech et al. 2000; Sala et al. 2000) and thus the richness and composition of native bird species (Marzluff 2001; McKinney 2008). But what is urbanisation exactly, and what are the
123
Landscape Ecol
associated effects of urbanisation on birds? Urbanisation is a process of population concentration (Tisdale 1941) and is thus attended by transformation of land with near-natural habitats or agricultural areas, to land that is used for
Data Loading...
