Urban Bird Diversity and Landscape Complexity: Species- environment Associations Along a Multiscale Habitat Gradient

By Stephanie J. Melles, S. M. Glenn, K. Martin. 2003

500 citations recorded by the source corpus.

For birds in urban environments, the configuration of local habitat within the landscape may be as critical as the composition of the local habitat itself. We examined the relative importance of environmental attributes (e.g., tree cover, composition, and number of tree species) measured at different spatial scales in relation to urban bird species richness and abundance. We expected that some bird species and nesting guilds would have a closer association with landscape-level features (within 1000 m), such as proximity to large forested areas, than with local-scale habitat measures (within 50 m). To investigate this, avian community data were collected at 285 point-count stations in 1997 and 1998 along four roadside transects located in Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Transects (5-25 km in length) bisected three large parks (>324 ha) and proceeded along residential streets in urban and suburban areas. In total, 48 bird species were observed, including 25 common species. Species richness declined in relation to a gradient of increasing urbanization, as measured by local- and landscape-level habitat features. We further examined the significance and importance of local- vs. landscape- level habitat attributes using logistic regression and found that both scales explained the presence/absence distributions of residential birds. Local-scale habitat features such as large coniferous trees, berry-producing shrubs, and freshwater streams were of particular importance in estimating the likelihood of finding bird species. Landscape measures, particularly forest cover (within 500 m) and park area (measured at different scales as a function of distance from point-count stations) significantly improved likelihood estimations based solely on local-scale habitat features. Our results suggest that both local- and landscape-scale resources were important in determining the distribution of birds in urban areas. Parks, reserves, and the surrounding residential areas should be integrated into urban planning and development designs to maintain resident avifauna and overall species diversity in urban environments.

Subfields: Ecology, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af9bd42368adcfc2546ad8d0f899f98ee9080c7e

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Citations in the corpus

Effect of urbanization on the avifauna in a tropical metropolitan area (2011, background): “…degradation, expansion of the agricultural frontier, and habitat fragmentation accelerates around urban nuclei (Harris 1984; Primack 1998; SánchezAzofeifa et al. 2001; Harvey et al. 2008), further isolating the few fragments of available habitat for resident and migrant birds (Melles et al. 2003).”
How do habitat variability and management regime shape the spatial heterogeneity of birds within a large Mediterranean urban park (2008, background): “…(Collins t al., 2000; Marzluff et al., 2001; Miller and Hobbs, 2002), uch recent research has examined changes in biodiversity cross rural-urban gradients (e.g. Blair, 1996; Savard et al., 2000; ernandez-Juricic and Jokimäki, 2001; Melles et al., 2003; Lim nd Sodhi, 2004; Bino et al., in press).”
Small urban woodlands as biodiversity conservation hot-spot: a multi-taxon approach (2008, background): “First, we revealed that the results from a rural–urban gradient depend on the chosen scale: patch scale, adjacent or wide landscape scale representing different urban constraints that are important in developing an understanding of animal community responses ( Melles et al. 2003; Clergeau et al. 20”
Does Urbanization Filter Birds on the Basis of Their Biological Traits (2008, background): “This process has diverse ecological effects such as fragmentation, isolation, and loss of natural habitat patches, as well as creation of new habitats (Marzluff and Ewing 2001, Melles et al. 2003, Loram et al. 2007).”
Ecological and Psychological Value of Urban Green Space (2010, background): “Furthermore, the influence of green space on biodiversity can act at different spatial scales, both locally and regionally (Clergeau et al., 2001; Melles et al., 2003 ).”
Bee diversity and abundance in an urban setting (2004, background): “Cities can display a surprisingly high species diversity compared with intensively cultivated rural areas (Goulson et al. 2001; Melles et al. 2003), and a number of bee species are well adapted to urban habitats and patchy environments 866 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST November/December 2004”
Habitat selection of breeding riparian birds in an urban environment: untangling the relative importance of biophysical elements and spatial scale (2011, background): “Past studies also demonstrate that proximity and extent of forested habitats can affect the distribution of riparian birds, with greater bird abundance and richness as forest cover increases (Friesen et al., 1995; Saab, 1999; Melles et al., 2003; Donnelly & Marzluff, 2004; Mason et al., 2007).”
Living in the city: can anyone become an ‘urban exploiter'? (2007, background): “In these heavily urbanized areas, the native habitat was highly disrupted and there were very few local native species (see also Jokimäki & Suhonen, 1998; Melles et al., 2003).”
Benefits of restoring ecosystem services in urban areas (2015, background): “Habitat: An important characteristic of urban areas is their mosaic of habitats and a surprisingly high diversity of plant and animal species [30–32].”
Effects of urbanization on butterfly species richness, guild structure, and rarity (2007, background): “…have focused primarily on vertebrates, including reptiles (Germaine and Wakeling 2001), amphibians (Gibbs 1998; Homan et al. 2004; Clark et al. 2007), mammals (Riley et al. 2003; Jedrzejewski et al. 2004), and birds (Green and Baker 2003; Melles et al. 2003; Miller et al. 2003; Lee et al. 2004).”