Bar-Ziv Michael, Ziv Hilla, Breuer Mookie, Arnon Eitam, Uzan Assaf, Spiegel Orr
Faculty of Life Sciences, School of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel.
Proc Biol Sci. 2025 Jan;292(2038):20242471. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2024.2471. Epub 2025 Jan 8.
Understanding how wildlife responds to the spread of human-dominated habitats is a major challenge in ecology. It is still poorly understood how urban areas affect wildlife space-use patterns and consistent intra-specific behavioural differences (i.e. behavioural types; BTs), which in turn shape various ecological processes. To address these questions, we investigated the movements of a common resident wader, the spur-winged lapwing (), hypothesizing that urban individuals will be more mobile than rural ones. We used an ATLAS tracking system to track many (= 135) individuals at a high resolution over several months each. We first established that daily movement indices show consistent differences among individuals, acting as spatial-BTs. Then focusing on the two main principle components of lapwings' daily movements-mobility and position along the exploration-exploitation gradient-we investigated how these BTs are shaped by urbanization, season (nesting versus non-nesting) and sex. We found that urban lapwings were indeed more mobile in both seasons. Furthermore, urban females were less explorative than rural females, especially during the nesting season. These results highlight how urbanization affects wildlife behaviour, even of apparently urban-resilient avian residents. This underscores the need to consider possible behavioural consequences that are only apparent through advanced tracking methods.
了解野生动物如何应对人类主导栖息地的扩张是生态学中的一项重大挑战。目前人们对城市地区如何影响野生动物的空间利用模式以及种内一致的行为差异(即行为类型;BTs)仍知之甚少,而这些差异反过来又塑造了各种生态过程。为了解决这些问题,我们调查了一种常见的留鸟涉禽——距翅麦鸡(Vanellus spinosus)的活动情况,假设城市个体比农村个体更具移动性。我们使用了一种地图跟踪系统,在几个月的时间里对大量个体(n = 135)进行高分辨率跟踪。我们首先确定,每日活动指数在个体之间显示出一致的差异,可作为空间行为类型。然后,我们聚焦于麦鸡每日活动的两个主要主成分——移动性以及在探索 - 利用梯度上的位置——研究这些行为类型如何受到城市化、季节(繁殖期与非繁殖期)和性别的影响。我们发现,城市麦鸡在两个季节确实都更具移动性。此外,城市雌性比农村雌性的探索性更低,尤其是在繁殖季节。这些结果凸显了城市化如何影响野生动物的行为,即使是对于那些看似适应城市环境的鸟类居民。这强调了需要考虑那些只有通过先进跟踪方法才能显现出来的可能行为后果。