scholarly journals Phantom of the forest or successful citizen? Analysing how Northern Goshawks ( Accipiter gentilis ) cope with the urban environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 201356
Author(s):  
Manuela Merling de Chapa ◽  
Alexandre Courtiol ◽  
Marc Engler ◽  
Lisa Giese ◽  
Christian Rutz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Accipiter Gentilis ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Northern Goshawk ◽  
City Life ◽  
Trichomonas Gallinae ◽  
Northern Goshawks ◽  
Study Sites ◽  
Urban Exploiter

By 2040, roughly two-thirds of humanity are expected to live in urban areas. As cities expand, humans irreversibly transform natural ecosystems, creating both opportunities and challenges for wildlife. Here, we investigate how the Northern Goshawk ( Accipiter gentilis ) is adjusting to urban environments. We measured a variety of behavioural and ecological parameters in three urban and four rural study sites. City life appeared related to all parameters we measured. Urban female goshawks were overall 21.7 (CI 95% 5.13–130) times more likely to defend their nestlings from humans than rural females. Urban goshawks were 3.64 (CI 95% 2.05–6.66) times more likely to feed on pigeons and had diets exhibiting lower overall species richness and diversity. Urban females laid eggs 12.5 (CI 95% 7.12–17.4) days earlier than rural individuals and were 2.22 (CI 95% 0.984–4.73) times more likely to produce a brood of more than three nestlings. Nonetheless, urban goshawks suffered more from infections with the parasite Trichomonas gallinae , which was the second most common cause of mortality (14.6%), after collisions with windows (33.1%). In conclusion, although city life is associated with significant risks, goshawks appear to thrive in some urban environments, most likely as a result of high local availability of profitable pigeon prey. We conclude that the Northern Goshawk can be classified as an urban exploiter in parts of its distribution.

scholarly journals Noise Events Monitoring for Urban and Mobility Planning in Andorra la Vella and Escaldes-Engordany

Environments ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Alsina-Pagès ◽  
Robert Garcia Almazán ◽  
Marc Vilella ◽  
Marc Pons
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
City Life ◽  
The Impact

Noise pollution is a critical factor and it has an important impact on public health, with the relationship between road traffic noise (RTN) and several illnesses in urban areas of particular concern. Andorra is currently developing a national strategy regarding noise pollution in their urban environments. The Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Sustainability is trying to to identify, monitor, map and model the effects of noise pollution and design mitigation policies to reduce the impact in certain priority areas. This analysis should take into account the existence of different types of anomalous noise events (ANEs) present in the street, e.g., horns, people talking, music, and other events that coexist with RTN, to characterize the soundscape of each of the locations. This paper presents a preliminary analysis considering both the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the duration of the ANEs to evaluate their presence in urban areas in the three different locations in Andorra la Vella and Escaldes-Engordany. The experiments conducted required a 10-h recording campaign distributed in the three locations under study, which was evaluated on two different days, one during the week and the other on the weekend. Afterwards, the data were carefully labeled and the SNR of each event was evaluated to determine the potential impact of the four categories under study: vehicles, works, city life and people.

scholarly journals Diet and brood size in rural and urban Northern Goshawks Accipiter gentilis in southern Finland

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tapio Solonen ◽  
Heikki Lokki ◽  
Seppo Sulkava
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Brood Size ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Breeding Habitat ◽  
Accipiter Gentilis ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Wilderness Area ◽  
Northern Goshawks

The brood size in the Finnish Northern Goshawks seems to be associated with the breeding habitat and the availability of suitable prey. In this study, we examined these relationships in three study areas of different landscape structure in southern Finland, including a recently colonized urban area. The most abundant prey categories found in the food remains of the goshawk included corvids, turdids, columbids, gallinaceous birds, and squirrels. Corvids dominated in the diet samples of all the study areas. The number of turdids and columbids in the samples was significantly higher in both the rural and the urban habitats than in the wilderness area. The number of gallinaceous birds was significantly higher in the wilderness area than in other habitats. Gallinaceous birds, particularly tetraonids, the traditional staple food of the Northern Goshawk in Finland, seemed to be largely compensated by corvids in the wilderness area and by corvids and columbids in the rural and urban areas. The amount of corvids in prey showed a positive relationship with brood size, suggesting some particular importance of this prey in the goshawk diet. In all, diet seemed to explain partly between-landscape variations in the brood size of the goshawk. The brood size was significantly higher in the urban landscape than elsewhere.

scholarly journals The evolution of city life

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1884) ◽  
pp. 20181529 ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Santangelo ◽  
L. Ruth Rivkin ◽  
Marc T. J. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Leading Edge ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanisms

Urbanization represents a dominant and growing form of disturbance to Earth's natural ecosystems, affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services on a global scale. While decades of research have illuminated the effects of urban environmental change on the structure and function of ecological communities in cities, only recently have researchers begun exploring the effects of urbanization on the evolution of urban populations. The 15 articles in this special feature represent the leading edge of urban evolutionary biology and address existing gaps in our knowledge. These gaps include: (i) the absence of theoretical models examining how multiple evolutionary mechanisms interact to affect evolution in urban environments; (ii) a lack of data on how urbanization affects natural selection and local adaptation; (iii) poor understanding of whether urban areas consistently affect non-adaptive and adaptive evolution in similar ways across multiple cities; (iv) insufficient data on the genetic and especially genomic signatures of urban evolutionary change; and (v) limited understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying the origin of new human commensals. Using theory, observations from natural populations, common gardens, genomic data and cutting-edge population genomic and landscape genetic tools, the papers in this special feature address these gaps and highlight the power of urban evolutionary biology as a globally replicated ‘experiment’ that provides a powerful approach for understanding how human altered environments affect evolution.

scholarly journals Population genomic analyses reveal a highly differentiated genetic cluster of northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis laingi) in Haida Gwaii

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Armando Geraldes ◽  
Kenneth K. Askelson ◽  
Ellen Nikelski ◽  
Frank I. Doyle ◽  
William L. Harrower ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Morphological Traits ◽  
Accipiter Gentilis ◽  
Haida Gwaii ◽  
Genetic Structuring ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Genetic Cluster ◽  
Northern Goshawk ◽  
Northern Goshawks

AbstractAccurate knowledge of geographic ranges and genetic relationships among populations is important when managing a species or population of conservation concern. In the western Canadian province of British Columbia, a subspecies of the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis laingi) is designated as Threatened under the Canadian Species at Risk Act. Historically, the range of this bird of prey has been ambiguous and its genetic distinctness from the other North American subspecies (Accipiter gentilis atricapillus) has not been well established. Given the uncertainty in using morphological traits to assign individual goshawks to these two subspecies, we analyzed genomic relationships in tens of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms identified using genotyping-bysequencing of high-quality genetic samples. This genome-wide analysis revealed a genetically distinct population of northern goshawks on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii and subtle genetic structuring among the remainder of our sampling sites within North America. Following from this analysis, we developed targeted genotyping assays for ten loci that are highly differentiated between the two main genetic clusters, allowing the addition of hundreds of low-quality samples to our analysis. This additional information confirmed that the distinct genetic cluster on Haida Gwaii is restricted to that archipelago. As the laingi form was originally described as being based in Haida Gwaii, where the type specimen of that form is from, further study (especially of morphological traits) may indicate a need to restrict this name to the Haida Gwaii genetic cluster. Regardless of taxonomic treatment, our finding of a distinct Haida Gwaii genetic cluster along with the small and historically declining population size of the Haida Gwaii population suggests a high risk of extinction of an ecologically and genetically distinct form of northern goshawk. Outside of Haida Gwaii, sampling regions along the coast of BC and southeast Alaska (often considered regions inhabited by laingi) show some subtle differentiation from other North American regions. We anticipate that these results will increase the effectiveness of conservation management of northern goshawks in northwestern North America. More broadly, other conservation-related studies of genetic variation may benefit from the two-step approach we employed that first surveys genomic variation using high-quality samples and then genotypes low-quality samples at particularly informative loci.

scholarly journals Immediate Species Responses to Catastrophic Natural Disturbances: Windthrow Effects on Density, Productivity, Nesting Stand Choice, and Fidelity in Northern Goshawks (Accipiter gentilis)

The Auk ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 119 (4) ◽  
pp. 1132-1137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Penteriani ◽  
Marie Mathiaut ◽  
Guy Boisson
Keyword(s):  
Adaptive Response ◽  
Natural Disturbance ◽  
Accipiter Gentilis ◽  
Original Structure ◽  
Natural Disturbances ◽  
80 And Over ◽  
Northern Goshawk ◽  
Northern Goshawks ◽  
The One ◽  
Breeding Seasons

Abstract In December 1999, an exceptional windstorm traveled across northern France (Côte d'Or). The severity of the stand damages ranged from <1 to >80%, and over 10% of the overall surface of several homogeneous woodlands (from ∼1,000 to 8,000 ha) was affected by the windstorm. Data were available on Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) density, productivity, and nesting stand preferences in that area before the disturbance. The species showed tolerance to the natural disturbance induced by the windstorm: we found no difference in density, nesting stand choice, or productivity between the six breeding seasons before the windthrow and in the one immediately after. Breeding pairs moved away (50–200 m) from their traditional nest stand only when its original structure was altered by >30% in the 50 m surrounding the nest tree. We hypothesize that the Northern Goshawk tolerance to windstorm damage may be the result of an adaptive response, which they have developed under both climate- and human-originated stresses.

scholarly journals Diet of the wild boar (Sus scrofa): implications for management in forest-agricultural and urban environments in South Korea

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seong-Min Lee ◽  
Eun-Jae Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Wild Boar ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Feeding Habits ◽  
Stomach Contents ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Natural Food ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
Study Sites ◽  
The Relationship

The wild boar is one of the most widely distributed in the world. In South Korea, the wild boar population has rapidly increased and their habitat use has expanded from forests to urban environments. This expansion has led to increased conflicts with humans, such as the severe damaging of crops and the attacking of people in urban areas. We assessed the stomach contents of wild boar killed by hunters in two different environments in Geochang and Seoul, South Korea, from 2012 to 2017. We compared the feeding habits between sites and between seasons and explored the relationship between the number of earthworms and the main diet. The diet of wild boars inhabiting the two environments were found to differ and vary seasonally. Wild boar in Geochang preferred crops, when available, to natural food resources. Although wild boar in Seoul also preferred crops, they had a higher composition of natural food in their diets because of a low availability of crops. The preference of crops and discarded food waste in urban areas is expected to have accelerated the appearance of wild boar in urban areas. The consumption of earthworms did not differ between the two study sites, but it did differ seasonally due to availability. The number of earthworms was significantly negatively correlated with crop availability in both sites. Effective management plans that involve targeted hunting by baiting with food in Seoul and direct hunting in the fall in Geochang should be implemented to resolve the human–wild boar conflicts in these areas.

The fancy city life: Kuhl's pipistrelle, Pipistrellus kuhlii, benefits from urbanisation

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (7) ◽  
pp. 598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Ancillotto ◽  
Alessandra Tomassini ◽  
Danilo Russo
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Habitat ◽  
Urban Habitats ◽  
Wild Mammals ◽  
City Life ◽  
Ecological Flexibility ◽  
Major Process

Context Urbanisation is often regarded as a major threat to global biodiversity. Although wildlife is frequently affected by urbanisation, some species may actually benefit from it. Bats are among the commonest wild mammals in human-modified areas, and some species seem particularly well suited to exploit urban habitats where they find roosting and foraging opportunities. Aims We investigated habitat selection around roosts of synurbic Kuhl’s pipistrelles, Pipistrellus kuhlii, in Italy. Methods We measured the effects of the amount of urban habitat on bat reproductive timing and success in human-modified environments. Key results We found that P. kuhlii selects roosts surrounded by areas featuring urban habitats, especially those subject to urban development. Colonies in cities and suburbs advanced parturition time and produced more pups than those in rural areas. Permanent water sources and artificial lights in the surrounding habitats also seemed to favour the species reproductive success, particularly in developing urban areas. Conclusions Our results showed that this bat benefits from urbanisation and provided new insights on the effects of this major process on animal ecology and conservation in urban environments. Implications Although the ecological flexibility and positive response to urbanisation of P. kuhlii may help explain its recent range expansion, the role of climate change as a potential driver of this process has yet to be tested.

Development of Novel Microsatellite Markers for the Northern Goshawk (Accipiter Gentilis) and their Utility in Cross-Species Amplification

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy L. Haughey ◽  
George K. Sage ◽  
Gabriel R. DeGange ◽  
Sarah A. Sonsthagen ◽  
Sandra L. Talbot
Keyword(s):  
Microsatellite Markers ◽  
North American ◽  
Individual Identification ◽  
Accipiter Gentilis ◽  
North American Population ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Northern Goshawk ◽  
Species Of Conservation Concern ◽  
Conservation Concern ◽  
Northern Goshawks

The Northern Goshawk ( Accipiter gentilis) is a large forest raptor with a Holarctic distribution and, in some portions of its range, a species of conservation concern. To augment previously reported genetic markers, 13 novel polymorphic microsatellite markers were developed to establish individual identification and familial relationships, to assess levels of genetic diversity, and to identify diagnostic markers. Of the 22 loci tested, 13 were polymorphic, seven were monomorphic, and two failed to amplify. This suite of microsatellite loci yielded a combined probability of parental exclusion of 98%; a single individual sampled from a North American population can be reliably identified using a combination of seven of the 13 polymorphic loci. Cross-species screening in Cooper's Hawks (A. cooperii) and Sharp-shinned Hawks (A. striatus) of the 20 loci that successfully amplified in Northern Goshawks identified 13 loci as polymorphic in each species. Six of these loci (Age1303, Age1308, Age1309, Age1312, and Age1314) appeared to be useful in distinguishing between Accipiter species. These markers will be useful to researchers investigating populations of North American accipiters.

scholarly journals Human-modified landscapes provide key foraging areas for a threatened flying mammal: The grey-headed flying-fox

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0259395
Author(s):  
Samantha H. Yabsley ◽  
Jessica Meade ◽  
John M. Martin ◽  
Justin A. Welbergen
Keyword(s):  
Plant Species ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Habitat Management ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Foraging Habitat ◽  
Natural Ecosystems ◽  
Flying Foxes ◽  
Mobile Species ◽  
Flying Fox

Urban expansion is a major threat to natural ecosystems but also creates novel opportunities that adaptable species can exploit. The grey-headed flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus) is a threatened, highly mobile species of bat that is increasingly found in human-dominated landscapes, leading to many management and conservation challenges. Flying-fox urbanisation is thought to be a result of diminishing natural foraging habitat or increasing urban food resources, or both. However, little is known about landscape utilisation of flying-foxes in human-modified areas, and how this may differ in natural areas. Here we examine positional data from 98 satellite-tracked P. poliocephalus for up to 5 years in urban and non-urban environments, in relation to vegetation data and published indices of foraging habitat quality. Our findings indicate that human-modified foraging landscapes sustain a large proportion of the P. poliocephalus population year-round. When individuals roosted in non-urban and minor-urban areas, they relied primarily on wet and dry sclerophyll forest, forested wetlands, and rainforest for foraging, and preferentially visited foraging habitat designated as high-quality. However, our results highlight the importance of human-modified foraging habitats throughout the species’ range, and particularly for individuals that roosted in major-urban environments. The exact plant species that exist in human-modified habitats are largely undocumented; however, where this information was available, foraging by P. poliocephalus was associated with different dominant plant species depending on whether individuals roosted in ‘urban’ or ‘non-urban’ areas. Overall, our results demonstrate clear differences in urban- and non-urban landscape utilisation by foraging P. poliocephalus. However, further research is needed to understand the exact foraging resources used, particularly in human-modified habitats, and hence what attracts flying-foxes to urban areas. Such information could be used to modify the urban foraging landscape, to assist long-term habitat management programs aimed at minimising human-wildlife conflict and maximising resource availability within and outside of urban environments.

Diversity of organisms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip James
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Native Species ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
The Common ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Micro Organisms ◽  
Diversity Of Life

The focus of this chapter is an examination of the diversity of living organisms found within urban environments, both inside and outside buildings. The discussion commences with prions and viruses before moving on to consider micro-organisms, plants, and animals. Prions and viruses cause disease in plants and animals, including humans. Micro-organisms are ubiquitous and are found in great numbers throughout urban environments. New technologies are providing new insights into their diversity. Plants may be found inside buildings as well as in gardens and other green spaces. The final sections of the chapter offer a discussion of the diversity of animals that live in urban areas for part or all of their life cycle. Examples of the diversity of life in urban environments are presented throughout, including native and non-native species, those that are benign and deadly, and the common and the rare.

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