Urban specialization reduces habitat connectivity by a highly mobile wading bird

作者：Claire S. Teitelbaum, Jeffrey Hepinstall‐Cymerman, Anjelika Kidd-Weaver, Sonia M. Hernández, Sonia Altizer, Richard J. Hall · 发表于：Movement Ecology · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1186/s40462-020-00233-7 · 被引用次数：31 · 研究领域：Wildlife-Road Interactions and Conservation、Avian ecology and behavior、Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

BACKGROUND: Mobile animals transport nutrients and propagules across habitats, and are crucial for the functioning of food webs and for ecosystem services. Human activities such as urbanization can alter animal movement behavior, including site fidelity and resource use. Because many urban areas are adjacent to natural sites, mobile animals might connect natural and urban habitats. More generally, understanding animal movement patterns in urban areas can help predict how urban expansion will affect the roles of highly mobile animals in ecological processes. METHODS: Here, we examined movements by a seasonally nomadic wading bird, the American white ibis (Eudocimus albus), in South Florida, USA. White ibis are colonial wading birds that forage on aquatic prey; in recent years, some ibis have shifted their behavior to forage in urban parks, where they are fed by people. We used a spatial network approach to investigate how individual movement patterns influence connectivity between urban and non-urban sites. We built a network of habitat connectivity using GPS tracking data from ibis during their non-breeding season and compared this network to simulated networks that assumed individuals moved indiscriminately with respect to habitat type. RESULTS: We found that the observed network was less connected than the simulated networks, that urban-urban and natural-natural connections were strong, and that individuals using urban sites had the least-variable habitat use. Importantly, ...