Spatial structure of avifauna along urban‐rural gradients

Abstract

We examined the pattern of species composition of breeding birds along urban-rural gradients in the Osaka Prefecture, western Japan. We recorded the proportion of nine types of land-use and the presence/absence of each of 76 breeding birds in 5 km square quadrats on a map of the Prefecture. The proportion of woodland and farmland which increased from urban to rural areas were two major enviornmental gradients according to Principal Component Analysis of the nine types of land-use. Ordination by Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) showed that the breeding bird distribution differentiated along the two major dines, woodland and farmland. The avifauna changed successively along these environmental gradients. There were no discrete boundaries of the distribution of bird species groups. We tentatively classified five groups of quadrats on the ordination plane of the sample score. The geographic position of these five groups on a map preserved the environmental gradient, but showed that water (seashore and river) was a stronger influence on bird species composition than land-use pattern. Although the diversity of land-use seemed to raise species richness in the third group, the less diverse, woodland-rich group contained as many species as the third group. Four groups of bird species, and one group in which species occurred in more than 90% of the quadrats, were classified in the CCA-ordination plane. The occurrence of these bird groups correlated with land-use; the first group with woodland area, the second with scatter woodland, the third with farmland and the fourth with seashore.

Impacts of Urban Areas and Their Characteristics on Avian Functional Diversity

“…Body mass data was obtained from Dunning (2007), and the Handbook of the Birds of the World (hereafter HBW;del-Hoyo et al, 1992del-Hoyo et al, -2011 was the primary source for all other traits, although Natuhara and Imai (1996) provided much additional data on nest sites. If data were unavailable from these sources we used regional field guides and handbooks (see Table S3 for list), but data remained unavailable for 140 trait values (0.9% of the total).…”

The Effects of Urbanization and Human Disturbance Upon Plant Community Structure and Bird Species Richness, Diversity, and Abundance in a Natural Forested Area (Forest Park) in Portland, Oregon

“…mostly in Europe. where ecosystems significantly unaffected by humans are virtually impossible to find (Becher and Brandes 1985;Blanco and Vel<isco 1996;Gutte 1990;Hong et al 1995;Kowarik 1990;Kubantsev and Kolyakin 1995;Natuhara and Imai 1996;Nuorteva 1971;Pysek 1989;Pysek and Pysek 1990;Reijnen and Foppen 1994;SolinskaG6rnicka and Symonides 1990;Sukopp 1972;Sukopp 1990;Supuka 1994). …”

“…1995;. and the relative human population density of the surrounding area (Blair 1996;Friesen et al 1995;Kowarik 1990;Natuhara and Imai 1996;Pouyat et al 1995b;Pysek 1989;Pysek and Pysek 1990).…”

Spatiotemporal changes of landscape pattern in response to urbanization

“…Based on this paradigm, variation in the degree of urbanization, in terms of land-use intensity and human intervention, is the "gradient". Similar to natural environmental gradients, "urbanization" is correlated to the spatial changes of ecosystem characteristics, such as species diversity (especially avifauna) (Blair, 1996;Natuhara and Imai, 1996;Blair and Launer, 1997;Ishitani et al, 2003;Maestas et al, 2003;Crooks et al, 2004;Sparks et al, 2005), vegetation composition and structure (Medley et al, 1995;Moffatt et al, 2004;Borgmann and Rodewald, 2005;Williams et al, 2005), soil nutrients (Pouyat and McDonnell, 1991;Pouyat et al, 1995;Zhu and Carreiro, 1999;Bennett, 2003;Pouyat and Carreiro, 2003), and water quality (Wear et al, 1998;Snyder et al, 2003).…”