Natural History Collection Department, Bombay Natural History Society, Mumbai, India.
Center for Environmental Research and Education (CERE), Mumbai, India.
PLoS One. 2020 Oct 21;15(10):e0240989. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240989. eCollection 2020.
Urbanization is one of the main drivers in the conversion of natural habitats into different land use and land cover types (LULC) which threaten the local as well as global biodiversity. This impact is particularly alarming in tropical countries like India, where ~18% of the world's population live, and its ever-growing economy (i.e., industrial development) expanded urban areas by several folds. We undertook this study to examine the impacts of urbanization (i.e., LULC) on terrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians) in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Western Ghats, India. We sampled different habitats ranged from highly disturbed urban areas to less disturbed forested areas. Multiple sampling methods such as quadrat sampling, line transect, point count, and camera trapping were used to quantify the target taxa. We used multi-species occupancy modeling in the Bayesian framework to estimate detection probability and occupancy and to assess the effect of various LULC on different species. All four groups showed a significant negative impact of increasing anthropogenic habitat cover on occupancy. Out of 213 species detected in this study, 96% of mammals, 85% of birds, 93.75% of amphibians, and 69.43% of reptiles showed a negative effect of anthropogenic habitat cover. Evidence suggests that historical and recent human disturbances could have played an important role in transforming this area from semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forest to open, scrubby, dry deciduous, and fire-prone landscape. This might be the reason for the high occupancy of open and degraded forest habitat preferring species in our study area. We recommend species-rich areas in the MMR, e.g., Karnala Bird Sanctuary (KBS) and Prabalgad-Matheran-Malanggad Hill Range (PMMHR), must be conserved through habitat restoration, ecotourism, public awareness, and policymaking.
城市化是将自然栖息地转化为不同土地利用和土地覆盖类型（LULC）的主要驱动因素之一，这威胁到当地乃至全球的生物多样性。这种影响在像印度这样的热带国家尤为惊人，印度拥有世界上约 18%的人口，其不断增长的经济（即工业发展）使城市面积扩大了数倍。我们进行这项研究是为了调查城市化（即 LULC）对印度西部高止山脉孟买大都市区（MMR）的陆地脊椎动物（哺乳动物、鸟类、爬行动物和两栖动物）的影响。我们采样了不同的栖息地，从高度受干扰的城市地区到受干扰较小的森林地区。我们使用了多种采样方法，如样方采样、线 transect、点计数和相机陷阱，以量化目标分类群。我们使用贝叶斯框架中的多物种占有模型来估计检测概率和占有，并评估各种 LULC 对不同物种的影响。所有四个组都显示出人为栖息地覆盖的增加对占有有显著的负面影响。在本研究中检测到的 213 个物种中，96%的哺乳动物、85%的鸟类、93.75%的两栖动物和 69.43%的爬行动物受到人为栖息地覆盖的负面影响。有证据表明，历史和近期的人类干扰可能在将该地区从半常绿和湿润落叶林转变为开阔、稀疏、干燥落叶林和易发生火灾的景观方面发挥了重要作用。这可能是我们研究区域中开放和退化森林栖息地偏好物种高占有度的原因。我们建议保护 MMR 中物种丰富的地区，例如 Karnala 鸟类保护区（KBS）和 Prabalgad-Matheran-Malanggad 山地区（PMMHR），通过栖息地恢复、生态旅游、公众意识和政策制定来保护这些地区。
