Determinants of bird community composition on patches in the suburbs of Paris, France

Abstract

The ecological processes responsible for the spatial assemblages of breeding bird communities in urban landscapes are more and more investigated. Indeed, understanding these processes is imperative to plan relevant management policies. We investigated breeding bird communities on 67 patches in the suburbs of Paris, France. We examined the role of patch characteristics and geographic distance between patches in determining similarity between bird assemblages. To do this, we proposed a new SØrensen similarity index based on estimators of change in community composition taking into account the detection probability of species. The patch occupancy by sedentary and migratory species was also estimated to compare their sensitivity to urbanization. Patches close to each other supported more similar bird assemblages, suggesting an effect of the spatial distribution of patches on bird dispersal and a posteriori on local community composition. Accounting for spatial location of patches, bird assemblage similarity was related to the similarity of the surrounding level of urbanization but not to the similarity of patch size or to the similarity of patch vegetation. The mean estimated occupancy rate of sedentary species was higher than that of migratory species in the whole study area. While sedentary species occupied patches surrounded by both moderate and high levels of urbanization, migratory ones primarily occupied patches surrounded by moderate levels of urbanization. Human choices in degrees, styles, and extent of urbanization, including designation and design of patches within an urban matrix, affect the composition of local bird communities.