Roof nesting by gulls for better or worse?

Abstract

Since the early 1970s in Italy, the yellow-legged gull Larus michahellis has been colonizing new kinds of nesting areas, in particular moorland and the rooftops of inhabited buildings. The incidence of rooftop colonies is now such that the yellowlegged gull has come in many urban areas to be regarded as a pest. Yet its colony structure and breeding biology in the urban situation in Italy have remained largely undocumented. This paper reports observations of yellow-legged gulls breeding in the town of Venice and in the surrounding lagoon during the 2003-2005 breeding seasons. The aim of this study was to examine the performance of birds breeding in natural and urban areas and to investigate the links between the natural and the newly established urban colony. For this, we analysed and compared factors indicative of breeder quality. Breeding performance was not substantially different in the two colonies. This suggests that gulls are successfully exploiting a new habitat, adapting to new resources, as other opportunistic species do.

Dynamic species distribution models reveal spatiotemporal habitat shifts in native range‐expanding versus non‐native invasive birds in an urban area

“…This characteristic induces a particular spatial structure where the urban part of the city is directly adjacent to natural areas. Since , the southern part of the city is classified as National Park.…”

“…For the period 2009 to 2015, yearly breeding site locations of both jackdaws and ring‐necked parakeets were compiled from the database of the regional antenna of the French Bird Protection League, a national network which compiles observations made by volunteers (Collectif, in  http://www.faune-paca.org , subject to a convention and extracted on December 2015). When using volunteer observation networks, potential biases in the sampling effort and uncertainties in the spatial location of occurrence points may occur (Dickinson et al ). To account for a possible uneven sampling effort, we included as bias predictors in the models the density of human population and the distance to small and main roads (Mair et al 2017).…”

“…The ring‐necked parakeet Psittacula krameri is a Psittacine species native from Asia and sub‐Saharan Africa and is the most widely distributed parrot species in the world (Forshaw ). The total number of individuals in Europe has been estimated to number at least 85 000 with populations successfully established in ten countries (Pârâu et al 2016).…”

“…We used a set of detailed habitat variables implemented in an ensemble forecasting of species distribution models (SDMs). SDMs encompasse a wide range of statistical approaches which quantify relationships between spatial distributions of species and the characteristics of their environment (Guisan and Zimmermann 2000, Franklin ). They have been widely used in ecology and evolution, including for informing conservation decisions (Guisan et al 2013), and for predicting the potential distributions of invasive species or disease vectors (Peterson 2003, Purse and Golding 2015).…”

Wildlife Strike Risk Assessment in Several Italian Airports: Lessons from BRI and a New Methodology Implementation

“…Many of these species present life histories that promote adaptation to urban environmental characteristics [3], [4], [5].…”