Wildlife Affordances of Urban Infrastructure: A Framework to Understand Human-Wildlife Space Use

Landscape affordances, what the environment offers an animal, are inherently species-specific to the extent that each taxon has unique needs and responses to landscape characteristics. Wildlife responses to landscape features range on a continuum from avoidance to attraction and quantifying these habits are the backbone of wildlife movement ecology. In anthropogenically modified landscapes, many taxa do not occupy areas heavily influenced by humans, while some species seem to flourish, such as coyotes (Canis latrans) and pigeons (Columba livia). Sufficient overlap in landscapes designed for human purposes (e.g., freeway underpasses, channelized waterways, and cemeteries) but which are also suitable for wildlife (e.g., by providing sources of food, shelter, and refuge) underlies wildlife persistence in urban areas and is increasingly important in the world's largest metropoles. Studying these overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife in cities provides a rich foundation for broadening human perceptions of cities as ecosystems that exhibit emergent hybridity, whereby certain anthropogenic features of urban landscapes can be used by wildlife even as they maintain their utility for humans. By examining scaling dynamics of the infrastructural signature, the phenomena of urban wildlife movement patterns conforming to the shapes of human infrastructural forms, we hope to expand on prior research in wildlife landscape ecology by stressing the importance of understanding the overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife. Further knowledge of the urban ecological commons is necessary to better design cities where emergent hybridity is leveraged toward the management goals of reducing human wildlife conflict and promoting biodiversity.

Movement ecology of vulnerable lowland tapirs across a gradient of human disturbance

Animal movement is a key ecological process that is tightly coupled to local environmental conditions. While agriculture, urbanisation, and transportation infrastructure are critical to human socio-economic improvement, these have spurred substantial changes in animal movement across the globe with potential impacts on fitness and survival. Notably, however, human disturbance can have differential effects across species, and responses to human activities are thus largely taxa and context specific. As human disturbance is only expected to worsen over the next decade it is critical to better understand how species respond to human disturbance in order to develop effective, case-specific conservation strategies. Here, we use an extensive telemetry dataset collected over 22 years to fill a critical knowledge gap in the movement ecology of lowland tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) across a gradient of human disturbance within three biomes in southern Brazil: the Pantanal, Cerrado, and Atlantic Forest. From these data we found that the mean home range size across all monitored tapirs was 8.31 km2 (95% CI: 6.53 - 10.42), with no evidence that home range sizes differed between sexes nor age groups. Interestingly, although the Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Pantanal vary substantially in habitat composition, levels of human disturbance, and tapir population densities, we found that lowland tapir movement behaviour and space use were consistent across all three biomes. Human disturbance also had no detectable effect on lowland tapir movement. Lowland tapirs living in the most altered habitats we monitored exhibited movement behaviour that was comparable to that of tapirs living in a near pristine environment. Contrary to our expectations, we observed very little individual variability in lowland tapir space use and movement, and human impacts on the landscape also had no measurable effect on their movement. Lowland tapir movement behaviour thus appears to exhibit very little phenotypic plasticity. Crucially, the lack of any detectable response to anthropogenic disturbance suggests that human modified habitats risk being ecological traps for tapirs and this information should be factored into conservation actions and species management aimed towards protecting lowland tapir populations.

GPS tracking reveals landfill closures induce higher foraging effort and habitat switching in gulls

Background Landfills are a major subsidy for some animals, with implications for their life history and demography. Gulls feed extensively on food from landfills and closures are expected to have ecological consequences, but how this influences movement ecology is virtually unknown. Methods We used GPS-tracking to quantify foraging behaviour and habitat choice of lesser black-backed gulls (Larus fuscus) breeding at two colonies before and after closure of two nearby landfills. Results Following closure, gulls from both colonies travelled further and for longer to forage. Gulls also changed habitat selection, although this differed by colony - birds from one colony shifted to agricultural habitats, while at the other, increased their use of urban areas. These behavioural responses had no effect on adult body condition but hint at potential direct effects of higher foraging costs and indirect impacts by shifting to new habitats. Conclusions Our results demonstrate how landfill availability influences gull foraging movements and habitat selection. We also emphasize the value of biologging to detect rapid behavioural responses in contrast to more conventional demographic approaches, which is especially important for animals that spend the majority of their lives away from direct observation.

Defining an epidemiological landscape by connecting host movement to pathogen transmission

Environment drives the host movements that shape pathogen transmission through three mediating processes: host density, host mobility, and contact. These processes combine with pathogen life-history to give rise to an “epidemiological landscape” that determines spatial patterns of pathogen transmission. Yet despite its central role in transmission, strategies for predicting the epidemiological landscape from real-world data remain limited. Here, we develop the epidemiological landscape as an interface between movement ecology and spatial epidemiology. We propose a movement-pathogen pace-of-life heuristic for prioritizing the landscape’s central processes by positing that spatial dynamics for fast pace-of-life pathogens are best-approximated by the spatial ecology of host contacts; spatial dynamics for slower pace-of-life pathogens are best approximated by host densities; and spatial dynamics for pathogens with environmental reservoirs reflect a convolution of those densities with the spatial configuration of environmental reservoir sites. We then identify mechanisms that underpin the epidemiological landscape and match each mechanism to emerging tools from movement ecology. Finally, we outline workflows for describing the epidemiological landscape and using it to predict subsequent patterns of pathogen transmission. Our framework links transmission to environmental context, providing a scaffold for mechanistically understanding how environmental context can generate and shift existing patterns in spatial epidemiology.

Accounting for animal movement improves vaccination strategies against wildlife disease in heterogeneous landscapes

Oral baiting is used to deliver vaccines to wildlife to prevent, control, and eliminate infectious diseases. A central challenge is how to spatially distribute baits to maximize encounters by target animal populations, particularly in urban and suburban areas where wildlife like raccoons (Procyon lotor) are abundant and baits are delivered along roads. Methods from movement ecology that quantify movement and habitat selection could help to optimize baiting strategies by more effectively targeting wildlife populations across space. We developed a spatially explicit, individual-based model of raccoon movement and oral rabies vaccine seroconversion to examine whether and when baiting strategies that match raccoon movement patterns perform better than currently employed baiting strategies in an oral rabies vaccination zone in greater Burlington, Vermont, USA. Habitat selection patterns estimated from locally radio-collared raccoons were used to parameterize movement simulations. We then used our simulations to estimate raccoon population rabies seroprevalence under currently used baiting strategies (actual baiting) relative to habitat selection-based baiting strategies (habitat baiting). We conducted simulations on the Burlington landscape and artificial landscapes that varied in heterogeneity relative to Burlington in the proportion and patch size of preferred habitats. We found that the benefits of habitat baiting strongly depended on the magnitude and variability of raccoon habitat selection and the degree of landscape heterogeneity within the baiting area. Habitat baiting improved seroprevalence over actual baiting for raccoons characterized as habitat specialists but not for raccoons that displayed weak habitat selection similar to radio-collared individuals - except when baits were delivered off roads where preferred habitat coverage and complexity was more pronounced. In contrast, in artificial landscapes with either more strongly juxtaposed favored habitats and/or higher proportions of favored habitats, habitat baiting performed better than actual baiting, even when raccoons displayed weak habitat preferences and where baiting was constrained to roads. Our results suggest that habitat selection-based baiting could increase raccoon population seroprevalence in urban-suburban areas, where practical, given the heterogeneity and availability of preferred habitat types in those areas. Our novel simulation approach provides a flexible framework to test alternative baiting strategies in multiclass landscapes to optimize bait distribution strategies.