Martín José, Ortega Jesús, García-Roa Roberto, Rodríguez-Ruiz Gonzalo, Pérez-Cembranos Ana, Pérez-Mellado Valentín
Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain.
Ethology Lab, Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, 46980 Valencia, Spain.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Apr 20;13(8):1413. doi: 10.3390/ani13081413.
Urbanization and anthropic influences can drastically modify a natural habitat and transform it into an easily recognizable "urban habitat". Human activities can also induce less severe modifications of what apparently might still look like natural habitats. Therefore, these subtle alterations may be hidden but can still cause important negative effects on plant and animals. In contrast, some species seem able to take advantage of these anthropic alterations. Here, we examined the possible effects of the anthropogenic disturbance of an apparent natural habitat on the feeding ecology and body condition of Moorish geckos, . For this, we compared microhabitat structure, invertebrate availability, the diet composition (estimated from fecal contents), diet selection patterns and body condition of the two populations of geckos inhabiting two contiguous small islands. These islands have similar environmental characteristics, but highly contrasting differences in urbanization and anthropogenic influence. We found that, although the abundance of potential invertebrate prey was similar on both habitats, the diversity of invertebrate prey was lower in the altered habitat. As a consequence, although composition of the diet of geckos was similar on both islands, the diversity of prey and food niche breadth were lower in the altered habitat, and patterns of diet selection changed. However, these inter-habitat differences did not seem to affect the body size and body condition of geckos. We discuss how flexibility in feeding ecology may allow some species to cope with small anthropic disturbances of the habitat.
城市化和人类活动的影响能够极大地改变自然栖息地，并将其转变为易于识别的“城市栖息地”。人类活动还可能对看似仍为自然栖息地的区域造成不太严重的改变。因此，这些细微的变化可能不易察觉，但仍会对动植物产生重要的负面影响。相比之下，一些物种似乎能够利用这些人类活动造成的改变。在此，我们研究了明显自然栖息地的人为干扰对摩尔壁虎觅食生态和身体状况可能产生的影响。为此，我们比较了居住在两个相邻小岛上的两个壁虎种群的微生境结构、无脊椎动物的可获取性、饮食组成（根据粪便内容物估算）、饮食选择模式和身体状况。这两个岛屿具有相似的环境特征，但在城市化程度和人为影响方面存在显著差异。我们发现，尽管两种栖息地中潜在无脊椎动物猎物的数量相似，但在受改变的栖息地中，无脊椎动物猎物的多样性较低。因此，尽管两个岛屿上壁虎的饮食组成相似，但在受改变的栖息地中，猎物多样性和食物生态位宽度较低，且饮食选择模式发生了变化。然而，这些栖息地之间的差异似乎并未影响壁虎的体型和身体状况。我们讨论了觅食生态的灵活性如何使一些物种能够应对栖息地受到的小规模人为干扰。
