Pena João Carlos de Castro, Martello Felipe, Ribeiro Milton Cezar, Armitage Richard A, Young Robert J, Rodrigues Marcos
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia Conservação e Manejo de Vida Silvestre, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Laboratório de Ornitologia, Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2017 Mar 23;12(3):e0174484. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174484. eCollection 2017.
The effects of streets on biodiversity is an important aspect of urban ecology, but it has been neglected worldwide. Several vegetation attributes (e.g. street tree density and diversity) have important effects on biodiversity and ecological processes. In this study, we evaluated the influences of urban vegetation-represented by characteristics of street trees (canopy size, proportion of native tree species and tree species richness)-and characteristics of the landscape (distance to parks and vegetation quantity), and human impacts (human population size and exposure to noise) on taxonomic data and functional diversity indices of the bird community inhabiting streets. The study area was the southern region of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais, Brazil), a largely urbanized city in the understudied Neotropical region. Bird data were collected on 60 point count locations distributed across the streets of the landscape. We used a series of competing GLM models (using Akaike's information criterion for small sample sizes) to assess the relative contribution of the different sets of variables to explain the observed patterns. Seventy-three bird species were observed exploiting the streets: native species were the most abundant and frequent throughout this landscape. The bird community's functional richness and Rao's Quadratic Entropy presented values lower than 0.5. Therefore, this landscape was favoring few functional traits. Exposure to noise was the most limiting factor for this bird community. However, the average size of arboreal patches and, especially the characteristics of street trees, were able to reduce the negative effects of noise on the bird community. These results show the importance of adequately planning the urban afforestation process: increasing tree species richness, preserving large trees and planting more native trees species in the streets are management practices that will increase bird species richness, abundance and community functional aspects and consequently improve human wellbeing and quality of life.
街道对生物多样性的影响是城市生态学的一个重要方面，但在全球范围内都被忽视了。几个植被属性（如行道树密度和多样性）对生物多样性和生态过程有重要影响。在本研究中，我们评估了以行道树特征（树冠大小、本地树种比例和树种丰富度）为代表的城市植被、景观特征（与公园的距离和植被数量）以及人类影响（人口规模和噪音暴露）对栖息在街道上的鸟类群落的分类数据和功能多样性指数的影响。研究区域是贝洛奥里藏特市（巴西米纳斯吉拉斯州）的南部地区，这是一个位于研究较少的新热带地区的高度城市化城市。在整个景观的街道上分布的60个点计数位置收集了鸟类数据。我们使用了一系列竞争的广义线性模型（使用针对小样本量的赤池信息准则）来评估不同变量集对解释观察到的模式的相对贡献。观察到73种鸟类在街道上活动：本地物种在整个景观中最为丰富和常见。鸟类群落的功能丰富度和饶氏二次熵的值低于0.5。因此，这种景观有利于少数功能性状。噪音暴露是这个鸟类群落最具限制作用的因素。然而，树木斑块的平均大小，尤其是行道树的特征，能够减少噪音对鸟类群落的负面影响。这些结果表明了合理规划城市绿化过程的重要性：增加树种丰富度、保护大树以及在街道上种植更多本地树种是能够增加鸟类物种丰富度、数量和群落功能方面，从而改善人类福祉和生活质量的管理措施。
