Relationship of bird richness, abundance and assemblage to the built environment in a small island tropical urban setting: a Suva, Fiji case study

Abstract

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to selfarchive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com". AbstractThere have been few studies investigating the relationship between the built environment and the status of bird distributions in small island tropical urban areas. We present a study investigating the relationship between bird species richness, abundance and assemblage to the built environment in Suva, Fiji. Field surveys were taken at 54 randomly selected sites throughout the city, stratified by three building density classes and the central business district (CBD). At each site bird counts were recorded, along with environmental data such as average building height, within a 150 m radius. Land-use information was obtained from screen digitized high-resolution satellite imagery within the same radius. Distance to undeveloped patches of land within the urban area was calculated using a GIS. Analysis of the effects of the built environment was carried out for all species, and for exotic and native species separately. Abundance of exotics was significantly higher in the central business district (CBD) than all other urban density classes, and significantly higher than natives in all other density classes. We found a negative relationship between native species richness and distance to undeveloped patches, but no relationship for exotics. Species assemblage was not related to urban density class. We conclude that the status of native and exotic bird species in Suva is similar to what has been found in urban areas in temperate climates, and conservation efforts should focus on minimizing the amount of heavily urbanized "core areas" and protecting undeveloped areas of forested vegetation to improve bird biodiversity in small tropical islands cities.

Niche Analysis and Conservation of Bird Species Using Urban Core Areas

“…In addition, environmental variables at the local scale are often more important than regional ones in determining species distribution and community composition in urban landscapes [38][39][40][41]. Such variables include patch level variables (e.g., green space size, amount of gray, tree, shrub and bare ground cover [6,26,35,42]), matrix level variables (e.g., distance from the city edge and center, building height [37,43,44]) and disturbance variables (e.g., anthropogenic noise, pedestrian and car traffic [45][46][47]).…”

Birds of the Land of Swallows: contribution of the main ecosystems of Cozumel Island to its avian diversity

“…Besides recording high bird species richness in the studied mangroves, we recorded very low avian densities. Mangroves have been shown to shelter important avian diversity globally (Mohd-Azlan et al 2015;Titoko et al 2019), but the low densities we recorded were not necessarily expected, given that many associated species are social (e.g., White Ibis -Eudocimus albus; Wilson's Plover -Charadrius wilsonia; Kushlan et al 2017). Additionally, we recorded the highest number of unique species in mangroves.…”

“…Yet, some insular bird species have been shown to be able to overcome hazards and use human-disturbed habitats and related resources. In particular, synanthropic species have been shown to increase their abundances in highly disturbed areas, with an important number of species concentrating at intermediate-disturbance levels and in edge systems (Lugo et al 2012;Irizarry et al 2016;Titoko et al 2019). Furthermore, native vegetation on islands (e.g., mangroves and forests) do not only harbor important avian diversity but are often large-scale sources of diversity, mitigating some of the effects of human activities (Khimoun et al 2017;Wang et al 2017;Titoko et al 2019).…”

“…In this study, we contrasted ecological snapshots of each major ecosystem of Cozumel Island (i.e., tropical forest, mangrove, palm thicket, and urban setting) to assess their contribution to the island's avian diversity. Considering the relevance and uniqueness of mangroves, forests, and palm thickets on islands (Khimoun et al 2017;Wang et al 2017;Titoko et al 2019), we predicted that the bird assemblages in these ecosystems would be more diverse and unique than those from urban settings.…”

A Comparison of Fijian Honeyeaters Abundance and Foraging Behaviour at USP Laucala Campus and Colo-I-Suva Forest Reserve

“…Considering the looming ramifications of globalization, natural habitats are being modified or replaced with build structures, thus having a tremendous influence on biodiversity (McKinney, 2008;Meffert & Dziock, 2013). Avifauna are widely recognised as indicators of overall biodiversity and sustainable development due to their high mobility and habitat sensitivity (Titoko et al, 2019;Watling, 2013). Studies of bird distribution have highlighted a decrease in species richness (Chace & Walsh, 2006;Marzluff, 2001;Meffert & Dziock, 2013) and increase of introduced species (Clavero et al, 2009) in highly urbanized environments.…”