School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa.
Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Via Accademia Albertina 13, 10123, Turin, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jul 13;14(1):16170. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-67222-3.
Increased urbanisation influences the morphometric traits of various species, often resulting in urban individuals being smaller than their non-urban counterparts. Urbanisation can affect fundamental eco-evolutionary patterns and impact species' ability to adapt to and occupy rapidly changing environments through morphological changes. We investigated the morphometric responses of two passerine species, the non-native house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and its native congener, the Cape sparrow (Passer melanurus), along gradients of spatial and temporal urbanisation in South Africa over a 52-year period. The house sparrow was significantly heavier, larger and in better condition with increasing urban infrastructure and lower urban vegetation cover, while the Cape sparrow showed opposing trends along these gradients. Temporally, the house sparrow's body mass increased consistently over the 52-year study period, suggesting changes in morphology were concomitant with increasing urbanisation over time. This study demonstrates distinct differences in the morphological responses of the non-native house sparrow and the native Cape sparrow to increasing urban development. These morphological responses may also underpin community-level changes caused by urbanisation, enhancing the capabilities of non-native species to thrive over their native counterparts in these environments.
城市化的增加影响了各种物种的形态特征，通常导致城市个体比非城市个体更小。城市化会通过形态变化影响基本的生态进化模式，并影响物种适应和占据快速变化环境的能力。我们调查了南非 52 年来，两个雀形目物种——非本地的家麻雀（Passer domesticus）和其本地同属物种——海角麻雀（Passer melanurus）——在空间和时间城市化梯度上的形态响应。随着城市基础设施的增加和城市植被覆盖的减少，家麻雀的体重、体型和健康状况显著改善，而海角麻雀则沿着这些梯度呈现出相反的趋势。从时间上看，家麻雀的体重在 52 年的研究期间持续增加，这表明随着时间的推移，形态的变化与城市化的增加是同时发生的。本研究表明，非本地的家麻雀和本地的海角麻雀对不断增加的城市发展的形态响应存在明显差异。这些形态响应也可能是城市化引起的群落水平变化的基础，增强了非本地物种在这些环境中相对于本地物种的生存能力。
