| Literature DB >> 31857808 |
Anders Pape Møller1,2, Canwei Xia2, Bo ZHou3, Xianli Che4, Xingzhi CHu4, Changzhang Feng3, Karsten Laursen5, Federico Morelli6, Wangming Li4, Jianping Liu3, Qing Quan4, Min Zhang4, Qiang Zhang4, Qiangwen ZHan4, Laikun Ma3, Haitao Wang7, Fasheng Zou4, Wei Liang3.
Abstract
Urbanization effects on living organisms are spatially heterogeneous. Here we quantified the abundance of birds per tree in forested urban and rural habitats for 85,829 trees mainly in China and Europe. A population model was based on the assumption that: 1) birds have a normally distributed habitat preference; 2) an increase in population size linked to the habitat preference; 3) a population size dependent on the habitat preference; and 4) the removal of a certain fraction of individuals giving rise to extinction. We tested for large-scale differences in the impact of urbanization on the frequency distribution of the difference in abundance between urban and rural habitats in China and parts of Europe. The difference in the frequency distribution of urban population density of birds in trees minus rural population density of birds in trees in China and Europe was statistically significant, suggesting that the abundance of birds differed between trees in urban and rural habitats, but more so in China than in Europe. We hypothesize that more pronounced differences in China than in Europe may have arisen due to the Four Pests Campaign in 1958-1962 that resulted in death of hundreds of millions of birds (mainly tree sparrows Passer montanus, but also numerous other less common species that were starting to become urbanized around 1960). Species that were less common in 1960 could not sustain reductions in population size in urban areas and hence these species are still rare or absent in urban areas today 60 years later.Entities:
Keywords: ANOSIM; community composition; distribution; frequency skewness; habitat preference; human-bird interactions; kurtosis; sociality
Year: 2019 PMID: 31857808 PMCID: PMC6911853 DOI: 10.1093/cz/zoz007
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Curr Zool ISSN: 1674-5507 Impact factor: 2.624
Figure 1.Map of study sites where the number of individual birds and the number of species per tree were recorded.
Figure 2.Frequency distribution of log (abundance of a bird species in urban habitat) minus log (abundance of the same bird species in rural habitat) on the x axis. In (A), the normal distribution has a mean of 0 and an SD of 1 and a habitat preference for urban or rural habitats. In (B), a certain proportion of birds in urban habitats is removed, causing the frequency distribution to be displaced from a mean value of 0. In (C), species with a population size in urban habitats less than a certain value goes extinct there, resulting in a bimodal distribution. In (D), the habitat preference is bimodal with most species preferring rural habitat, whereas some have an innate preference for urban habitat, resulting in a bimodal distribution of log (abundance of urban populations) minus log (abundance of rural populations). (C) resembles the outcome after the Four Pests Campaign, while (D) resembles the habitat preference with a bimodal distribution.
Figure 3.Box plots of the number of birds in trees in rural and urban habitats in China and Europe. Box plots show medians (horizontal lines), means (rhombus), 95-percentiles and extreme values.
Summary statistics for the frequency distributions of log urban population density minus log rural population density in birds in China and Europe
| Variable | China | Europe |
|---|---|---|
| Mean | −0.1833 | −0.2652 |
| SE | 0.0476 | 0.0340 |
| Variance | 0.4117 | 0.1792 |
| Upper 95% CL | −0.0895 | −0.1981 |
| Lower 95% CL | −0.2772 | −0.3324 |
| Skewness | 0.6925 (0.1811) | −0.0435 (0.1967) |
| Kurtosis | 0.3821 (0.3621) | 1.4587 (0.3935) |
|
| 182 | 155 |
Values significantly different between China and Europe.
Figure 4.ANOSIM results showing dissimilarity based on bird community composition in sample sites using Jaccard’s index for computing the distance (dissimilarity) between rural and urban environments in Europe (top) and Asia (bottom). Notched boxplots indicate the dissimilarity rank distributions for between and within groups presented in plots. Box length indicates interquartile range and medians are indicated as black horizontal bars.
Figure 5.Box plots of log urban population density minus log rural population density in relation to sociality (0 – solitary, 1 – sociality) with means (horizontal lines), quartiles (boxes), 5- and 95-percentiles (error bars), and extreme values (dots).
Figure 6.Distribution of values of log urban minus log rural population density of birds in Europe and China. Note the high frequency of observations at 0.0 to −0.5. The box plots show means (line), medians (rhombus), quartiles (square), 5- and 95-percentiles (error bars), and extreme values (dots). The normal frequency distribution is also shown.
| Country | No birds | Prop with birds | Latitude | Longitude | Urban or rural | Breeding | Mean | 95% Upper CI | 5% Lower CI | No. of trees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark | 336 | 0.0845 | 56.27 | 10.35 | Rural | Non-breeding | 0.109 | 0.1531 | 0.0649 | 367 |
| Denmark | 195 | 0.0201 | 56.2 | 10.33 | Urban | Non-breeding | 0.0201 | 0.0398 | 0.0004 | 199 |
| China | 1980 | 0.0100 | 19.08 | 109.08 | Rural | Breeding | 0.027 | 0.0425 | 0.0115 | 2,000 |
| China | 1962 | 0.0832 | 39.93 | 116.38 | Urban | Breeding | 0.1687 | 0.1985 | 0.1388 | 2,140 |
| China | 3572 | 0.0359 | 43.83 | 125.28 | Urban | Breeding | 0.0877 | 0.1191 | 0.0563 | 3,705 |
| China | 1651 | 0.0288 | 19.28 | 109.05 | Urban | Breeding | 0.06062 | 0.0922 | 0.029 | 1,700 |
| China | 3275 | 0.0452 | 42.42 | 117 | Rural | Breeding | 0.0898 | 0.1041 | 0.0754 | 3,430 |
| China | 4871 | 0.0258 | 30.65 | 104.08 | Urban | Breeding | 0.1288 | 0.1663 | 0.0913 | 5,000 |
| China | 3825 | 0.0438 | 23.17 | 112.53 | Rural | Breeding | 0.1225 | 0.1457 | 0.0993 | 4,000 |
| China | 3921 | 0.0198 | 29.53 | 103.33 | Rural | Breeding | 0.058 | 0.0773 | 0.0387 | 4,000 |
| Denmark | 976 | 0.0240 | 56.37 | 8.95 | Rural | Breeding | 0.024 | 0.0335 | 0.0145 | 1,000 |
| Japan | 973 | 0.0270 | 37.75 | 140.47 | Rural | Breeding | 0.028 | 0.0386 | 0.0174 | 1,000 |
| Denmark | 980 | 0.0200 | 56.34 | 8.99 | Rural | Breeding | 0.02 | 0.0287 | 0.0113 | 1,000 |
| China | 4857 | 0.0286 | 23.17 | 113.46 | Urban | Breeding | 0.076 | 0.0911 | 0.0609 | 5,000 |
| China | 5099 | 0.1255 | 23.08 | 113.3 | Urban | Non-breeding | 0.278 | 0.3097 | 0.2463 | 5,831 |
| China | 1117 | 0.0692 | 19.98 | 110.52 | Urban | Non-breeding | 0.3633 | 0.4856 | 0.2411 | 1,200 |
| Denmark | 962 | 0.0380 | 57.15 | 10.02 | Rural | Breeding | 0.039 | 0.0513 | 0.0267 | 1,000 |
| China | 1973 | 0.0135 | 19.27 | 109.05 | Rural | Breeding | 0.0395 | 0.0614 | 0.0176 | 2,000 |
| China | 3929 | 0.0178 | 31.82 | 114.07 | Rural | Breeding | 0.0305 | 0.0416 | 0.0194 | 4,000 |
| Denmark | 198 | 0.0704 | 56.28 | 9.12 | Rural | Non-breeding | 0.0986 | 0.1518 | 0.0454 | 213 |
| China | 1984 | 0.0080 | 19.27 | 109.05 | Urban | Breeding | 0.0265 | 0.0451 | 0.0079 | 2,000 |
| China | 3925 | 0.0188 | 22.48 | 106.97 | Rural | Breeding | 0.0495 | 0.0643 | 0.0347 | 4,000 |
| France | 927 | 0.0730 | 48.7 | 2.18 | Rural | Breeding | 0.101 | 0.1292 | 0.0728 | 1,000 |
| France | 888 | 0.1429 | 48.7 | 2.18 | Urban | Breeding | 0.1544 | 0.179 | 0.1299 | 1,036 |
| France | 914 | 0.0860 | 48.7 | 2.18 | Rural | Breeding | 0.094 | 0.1137 | 0.0743 | 1,000 |
| Denmark | 971 | 0.0290 | 57.2 | 9.55 | Rural | Breeding | 0.044 | 0.0705 | 0.0175 | 1,000 |
| France | 943 | 0.0570 | 48.72 | −3.98 | Urban | Non-breeding | 0.146 | 0.218 | 0.074 | 1,000 |
| China | 957 | 0.0430 | 38.25 | 114.68 | Urban | Breeding | 0.249 | 0.3413 | 0.1567 | 1,000 |
| Bahrein | 262 | 0.1813 | 26.2 | 50.6 | Urban | Non-breeding | 0.3969 | 0.5368 | 0.2569 | 320 |
| China | 9661 | 0.0339 | 30.53 | 114.37 | Urban | Breeding | 0.1206 | 0.1386 | 0.1025 | 10,000 |
| China | 954 | 0.0460 | 19.28 | 109.05 | Urban | Breeding | 0.191 | 0.2715 | 0.1105 | 1,000 |
| China | 1977 | 0.0115 | 19.28 | 109.05 | Rural | Breeding | 0.02 | 0.0298 | 0.0102 | 2,000 |
| China | 4918 | 0.0164 | 39.97 | 115.43 | Rural | Breeding | 0.0292 | 0.0365 | 0.0219 | 5,000 |
| China | 3076 | 0.0388 | 36.68 | 114.72 | Rural | Breeding | 0.1081 | 0.1447 | 0.0716 | 3,200 |
| China | 3414 | 0.0178 | 44.05 | 126.08 | Rural | Breeding | 0.0235 | 0.0299 | 0.0173 | 3,476 |