Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Research Laboratory, Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada.
Ecol Appl. 2011 Sep;21(6):2297-312. doi: 10.1890/09-1905.1.
To date, the vast majority of studies in urban areas have been carried out on birds, yet it is not known whether the responses of birds to urbanization are congruent with those of other taxa. In this paper, we compared the responses of breeding birds and carabid beetles to urbanization, specifically asking whether the emerging generalizations of the effects of extreme levels of urbanization on birds (declines in total species richness and the richness of specialist species, increases in total abundance and the abundances of native generalist and introduced species, and community simplification, including increasing similarity) could also be applied to ground beetles. We also directly tested for congruence between birds and ground beetles using correlations between variables describing bird and beetle community structure and correlations between bird and beetle distance matrices describing community dissimilarity between pairs of sampling locations. Breeding bird and carabid beetle community data were collected in Ottawa, Ontario, and Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, in two groups of sites: developed sites representing the predictor variable within-site housing density, and forested sites adjacent to development representing the predictor variable neighboring housing density (each site was 0.25 km2). Breeding birds and carabid beetles do not respond similarly to increasing within-site housing density but do exhibit some similar responses to increasing neighboring housing density. Birds displayed strong declines in diversity, compositional changes, and community simplification in response to increasing within-site housing density. Forest and introduced species of birds and beetles responded similarly to increasing housing density within a site, but responses of overall diversity and open-habitat species richness and patterns of community simplification differed between birds and beetles. Increasing neighboring housing density resulted in increases in the abundances of introduced birds and introduced beetles and similar patterns of community simplification in both taxa. To better understand and mitigate the effects of urbanization on biodiversity, we suggest that, in addition to the responses of birds, future research should focus on the responses of other taxa in the urban matrix.
迄今为止，绝大多数城市地区的研究都集中在鸟类上，但尚不清楚鸟类对城市化的反应是否与其他类群的反应一致。在本文中，我们比较了繁殖鸟类和步甲科甲虫对城市化的反应，具体来说，我们询问了鸟类对极端城市化水平的影响（总物种丰富度和特有物种丰富度下降、总丰度和本地广布种和引入种丰度增加以及群落简化，包括相似性增加）的概括是否也适用于步甲科。我们还通过描述鸟类和甲虫群落结构的变量之间的相关性以及描述对采样地点对之间群落差异的鸟类和甲虫距离矩阵之间的相关性，直接测试了鸟类和步甲科之间的一致性。繁殖鸟类和步甲科甲虫群落数据是在加拿大安大略省渥太华和魁北克省加蒂诺的两组地点收集的：代表局域住房密度预测变量的发达地点和与发展相邻的代表邻域住房密度预测变量的森林地点（每个地点为 0.25 平方公里）。繁殖鸟类和步甲科甲虫对局域住房密度的增加没有相似的反应，但对邻域住房密度的增加确实表现出一些相似的反应。鸟类对局域住房密度的增加表现出多样性、组成变化和群落简化的强烈下降。森林和引入鸟类和甲虫物种对局域住房密度的增加反应相似，但总体多样性和开放生境物种丰富度以及群落简化模式在鸟类和甲虫之间存在差异。增加邻域住房密度导致引入鸟类和引入甲虫的丰度增加，并且在两个类群中都存在类似的群落简化模式。为了更好地理解和减轻城市化对生物多样性的影响，我们建议，除了鸟类的反应外，未来的研究还应关注城市矩阵中其他类群的反应。
