Urbanization and species occupancy frequency distribution patterns in core zone areas of European towns

Abstract

More and more of the globe is becoming urbanized. Thus, characterizing the distribution and abundance of species occupying different towns is critically important. The primary aim of this study was to examine the effect of urbanization and latitude on the patterns of species occupancy frequency distribution (SOFD) in urban core zones of European towns (38 towns) along a 3850-km latitudinal gradient. We determined which of the three most common distributional models (unimodal-satellite dominant, bimodal symmetrical, and bimodal asymmetrical) provides the best fit for urban bird communities using the AICc-model selection procedure. Our pooled data exhibited a unimodal-satellite SOFD pattern. This result is inconsistent with the results from previous studies that have been conducted in more natural habitats, where data have mostly exhibited a bimodal SOFD pattern. Large-sized towns exhibited a bimodal symmetric pattern, whereas smaller-sized towns followed a unimodal- -satellite dominated SOFD pattern. The difference in environmental diversity is the most plausible explanation for this observation because habitat diversity of the study plots decreased as urbanization increased. Southern towns exhibited unimodal satellite SOFD patterns, central European towns exhibited bimodal symmetric, and northern towns exhibited bimodal asymmetric SOFD patterns. One explanation for this observation is that urbanization is a more recent phenomenon in the north than in the south. Therefore, more satellite species are found in northern towns than in southern towns. We found that core species in European towns are widely distributed, and their regional population sizes are large. Our results indicated that earlier urbanized species are more common in towns than the species that have urbanized later. We concluded that both the traits of bird species and characteristics of towns modified the SOFD patterns of urban-breeding birds. In the future, it would be interesting to study how the urban history impacts SOFD patterns and if the SOFD patterns of wintering and breeding assemblages are the same.

Scale dependence of biotic homogenisation by urbanisation: a comparison of urban bird communities between central Argentina and northern Finland

“…On the other hand, bird richness of town centres was comparable between the study countries, supporting a view that species richness does not decrease toward the poles in heavily urbanised areas (Jokimäki & Suhonen 1993;Jokimäki et al 1996Jokimäki et al , 2016Clergeau et al 2001;Filloy et al 2015; but see Murthy et al 2016). One reason for the lack of decreasing latitudinal trend in wintering species richness may be that only a few species are able to live in town centres, and these species are the same all over the world (Jokimäki et al 1996).…”

“…As urbanisation is increasing around the world, it is relevant to study its effects on urban wildlife . The most urbanised sites are occupied by a few species, most of them being cosmopolitan or having a generalist way of life (Huhtalo & Järvinen 1977;Blair 1996;Leveau & Leveau 2004;Juri & Chani 2005;Ortega-Álvarez & MacGregor-Fors 2009;Jokimäki et al 2016;Sol et al 2014). Therefore, urbanisation promotes the extinction of specialist and endemic species and reduces the evolutionary distinctiveness of bird communities (Devictor et al 2008;González-Oreja 2011;Concepción et al 2016;Morelli et al 2016).…”

Temporally Stable Species Occupancy Frequency Distribution and Abundance–Occupancy Relationship Patterns in Urban Wintering Bird Assemblages

“…Because the wintering bird species pool is richer in southern than in northern Finland (Jokimäki et al, 1996;Väisänen, 2003), we expected that the relative number of satellite species will be higher in the southern than in the northern regions (Gaston et al, 1998;McGeoch and Gaston, 2002;Korkeamäki et al, 2018, but see Jokimäki et al, 2016. Second, we predicted that the SOFD pattern will differ between large-and small-sized towns as indicated in a previous study of European breeding birds in urban core zone areas (Jokimäki et al, 2016). Finally, we predicted stable SAOR patterns also in urban areas since it is a very common pattern in more natural areas (Blackburn et al, 1998;Webb et al, 2007;Heino, 2008;Zuckerberg et al, 2009).…”

Regional variations in occupancy frequency distribution patterns between odonate assemblages in Fennoscandia

“…There are several possible explanations to this variation in SOFD pattern between Fennoscandia waterbodies along latitudinal gradients (McGeoch and Gaston , Jokimäki et al. ). The SOFD patterns may differ due to sampling methods, such as the number of samples and the extent of sampling (McGeoch and Gaston , Heatherly et al.…”

“…However, SOFD patterns may also depend on abiotic and biotic factors: (1) habitat disturbance, (2) niche breadth, (3) dispersal ability, (4) sampling site position within geographical range, and (5) geographical range size distribution (McGeoch and Gaston , Jenkins , Jokimäki et al. ). First, in stable habitats with low levels of disturbance, communities should follow the bimodal SOFD pattern (Jenkins ).…”