What makes an urban bird?
What makes an urban bird?
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02247.x
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发表时间：
2011-01-01
影响因子：
11.6
通讯作者：
Gaston, Kevin J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Evans, Karl L.;Chamberlain, Dan E.;Gaston, Kevin J.
地球仪的城市发展正在增加。这对生物多样性构成了重大威胁，城镇和城市的生物多样性往往相对较差。尽管人们对确定物种的特征以预测其对环境退化的反应很感兴趣，但这种方法很少用于评估哪些物种特别容易受到城市发展的影响。在这里，我们探讨这个问题，利用一个最好的数据集物种的反应，城镇和城市在高度城市化的地区，包括鸟类密度在大约3000英国城市和农村1公里× 1公里的网格单元。我们发现，物种对城市化的反应的测量方式对这些反应与物种的生态和生活史特征之间的关联性质有显着的影响。我们主张，未来的研究应使用连续的指数的反应，考虑到相对的城市和农村密度，而不是孤立地使用城市密度，或二进制响应记录的存在/不存在的一个物种在城镇和城市。与以往的研究相反，我们发现，城市发展并不选择对鸟类的长距离移民和食虫动物，或物种有限的年度繁殖力和扩散能力。没有证据表明，以相对大脑大小衡量的行为灵活性会影响物种对城市环境的反应。在英国，以生态位而非宽度衡量的多面手物种受到城市发展的青睐，尽管程度较小，但那些以植物材料为食并在地面上筑巢的物种也是如此。我们的研究结果表明，城市化地区的城镇和城市中的鸟类生物多样性将得到促进，提供额外的资源，目前在城市地区稀缺，并开发合适的环境，地面筑巢物种。
Urban development is increasing across the globe. This poses a major threat to biodiversity, which is often relatively poor in towns and cities. Despite much interest in identifying species' traits that can predict their responses to environmental degradation this approach has seldom been used to assess which species are particularly vulnerable to urban development. Here we explore this issue, exploiting one of the best available datasets on species' responses to towns and cities in a highly urbanized region, comprising avian densities across approximately 3000 British urban and rural 1 km x 1 km grid cells. We find that the manner in which species' responses to urbanization is measured has a marked influence on the nature of associations between these responses and species' ecological and life history traits. We advocate that future studies should use continuous indices of responses that take relative urban and rural densities into account, rather than using urban densities in isolation, or a binary response recording the presence/absence of a species in towns and cities. Contrary to previous studies we find that urban development does not select against avian long-distance migrants and insectivores, or species with limited annual fecundity and dispersal capacity. There was no evidence that behavioural flexibility, as measured by relative brain size, influenced species' responses to urban environments. In Britain, generalist species, as measured by niche position rather than breadth, are favoured by urban development as are, albeit to a lesser extent, those that feed on plant material and nest above the ground. Our results suggest that avian biodiversity in towns and cities in urbanizing regions will be promoted by providing additional resources that are currently scarce in urban areas, and developing suitable environments for ground-nesting species.