A continental measure of urbanness predicts avian response to local urbanization

Abstract

Understanding species‐specific relationships with their environment is essential for ecology, biogeography and conservation biology. Moreover, understanding how these relationships change with spatial scale is critical to mitigating potential threats to biodiversity. But methods which measure inter‐specific variation in response to environmental parameters that are also generalizable across multiple spatial scales are scarce. We used broad‐scale avian citizen science data, over continental Australia, integrated with remotely‐sensed products, to produce a measure of urban‐tolerance for a given species at a continental‐scale. We then compared these urban‐tolerances to modelled responses to urbanization at a local‐scale, based on systematic sampling within four small cities. For 49 species which had sufficient data for modelling, we found a significant relationship (R2 = 0.51) between continental‐scale urbanness and local‐scale urbanness. We also found that relatively few citizen science observations (~250) are necessary for reliable estimates of continental‐scale species‐specific urban scores to predict local‐scale response to urbanization. Our approach demonstrates the applicability of broad‐scale citizen science data, contrasting both the spatial grain and extent of standard point‐count surveys generally only conducted at small spatial scales. Continental‐scale responses in Australia are representative of small‐scale responses to urbanization among four small cities in Australia, suggesting that our method of producing species‐specific urban scores is robust and may be generalized to other locations lacking appropriate data.