Multidimensional nutritional ecology and urban birds

Abstract

There is growing interest in the question of how urbanization affects the ecology of birds, across timescales from relatively short-term physiological responses to long-term evolutionary adaptation. The ability to gain the required nutrients in urban habitats is a key trait of successful urban birds. Foraging behavior, in itself, increasingly is recognized as a complex nutritional phenomenon, where the ratios, proportions, and amounts of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and lipid) in foods, meals, and diets have been shown to exert a driving influence. Yet, despite the rising trend of urbanization, the importance of food quality and quantity in urban ecology, and the growing evidence demonstrating the pervasive and sometimes complex role of macronutrients in foraging behavior, the nutritional ecology of urban birds remains poorly understood. Here, we review the foraging behavior and role of macronutrients in the ecology of urban birds and demonstrate how incorporating a multidimensional approach to nutrition can provide new insights into their urban ecology. To that end, we demonstrate how a macronutrient-based view can aid in understanding the relationships between natural, anthropogenic, and supplementary foods. We then provide an overview of multidimensional nutritional niche concepts that can be used to generate explanatory and predictive models for urban bird ecology. We conclude that multidimensional nutritional ecology provides an appropriate framework for understanding the roles that nutrition plays in the relationships between urban birds and their environments.

Niches in the Anthropocene: passerine assemblages show niche expansion from natural to urban habitats

“…Such environmental change is usually associated with a considerable reduction in species richness and functional and phylogenetic diversity, especially in birds (Devictor et al 2008, McKinney 2008, Clavel et al 2011, Bregman et al 2014, Sol et al 2017. When habitats are transformed, specialist species with narrow niches are lost and generalist species with broad niches persist (Bonier et al 2007, Coogan et al 2018; see also Sol et al 2002).…”

“…we hypothesized that generalist species in human-made habitats would have broader isotopic niches than specialist species in natural habitats, which has been a widely found empirical pattern (Devictor et al 2008, Coogan et al 2018. We then evaluated which of the two alternatives -niche packing (Fig.…”

Breath rate of passerines across an urbanization gradient supports the pace‐of‐life hypothesis and suggests diet‐mediated responses to handling stress

“…Additionally, diet has a relevant role in determining species capacity to colonize urban areas (Coogan, Raubenheimer, Zantis, & Machovsky-Capuska, 2018), and diet restriction and change are known to induce increased stress responses (Skinner et al, 2016;Will et al, 2015). Changes in diet composition have been described to impact fatty acid composition and oxidative stress across urbanization gradients (Isaksson, Andersson, Nord, von Post, & Wang, 2017).…”

Birds Drinking Alcohol: Species and Relationship with People. A Review of Information from Scientific Literature and Social Media

“…The consumption of alcohol is probably encouraged by modified/broken barriers with humans which even give birds access to novel, mainly junk, food [30]. Moreover, the high representation of drinking parrots is not only because they are common pets and thus recorded on amateur movies, but also because they have a very strong metabolism response to potential poisons, including alcohols and phenols [31]. Generally, ethanol consumption is detrimental to the fitness of organisms since it increases susceptibility to predation [32,33] by interfering with motor skills resulting in a significant loss of coordination [34].…”