Department of Conservation Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana - CSIC, Sevilla, Spain.
Population Ecology Group, Institut Mediterrani d'Estudis Avançats IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), Mallorca, Spain.
Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 27;9(1):2886. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39251-w.
Dispersal propensity has been correlated with personality traits, conspecific density and predation risk in a variety of species. Thus, changes in the relative frequency of behavioural phenotypes or in the ecological pressures faced by individuals in contrasting habitats can have unexpected effects on their dispersal strategies. Here, using the burrowing owl Athene cunicularia as a study model, we test whether changes in the behavioural profile of individuals and changes in conspecific density and predation pressure associated with urban life influence their breeding dispersal decisions compared to rural conspecifics. Our results show that breeding dispersal behaviour differs between rural and urban individuals. Site fidelity was lower among rural than among urban birds, and primarily related to an individual's behaviours (fear of humans), which has been reported to reflect individual personality. In contrast, the main determinant of site fidelity among urban owls was conspecific density. After taking the decision of dispersing, urban owls moved shorter distances than rural ones, with females dispersing farther than males. Our results support a personality-dependent dispersal pattern that might vary with predation risk. However, as multiple individuals of two populations (one urban, one rural) were used for this research, differences can thus also be caused by other factors differing between the two populations. Further research is needed to properly understand the ecological and evolutionary consequences of changes in dispersal behaviours, especially in terms of population structuring and gene flow between urban and rural populations.
扩散倾向与各种物种的个性特征、同种密度和捕食风险有关。因此，行为表型的相对频率变化或个体在对比栖息地中面临的生态压力的变化可能会对它们的扩散策略产生意想不到的影响。在这里，我们使用穴鸮 Athene cunicularia 作为研究模型，检验个体行为特征的变化以及与城市生活相关的同种密度和捕食压力的变化是否会影响它们的繁殖扩散决策，与农村同类相比。我们的结果表明，繁殖扩散行为在农村和城市个体之间存在差异。与城市鸟类相比，农村鸟类的栖息地保持率较低，主要与个体的行为（对人类的恐惧）有关，这反映了个体的个性。相比之下，城市穴鸮栖息地保持率的主要决定因素是同种密度。在做出扩散决定后，城市穴鸮的移动距离比农村穴鸮短，雌性的扩散距离比雄性远。我们的结果支持了一种依赖于个性的扩散模式，这种模式可能随着捕食风险而变化。然而，由于这项研究使用了两个种群（一个城市，一个农村）的多个个体，因此差异也可能是由两个种群之间存在的其他因素引起的。需要进一步研究才能正确理解扩散行为变化的生态和进化后果，特别是在种群结构和城市与农村种群之间的基因流动方面。
