Abstract
Urban areas are often considered to be a hostile environment for wildlife as they are highly fragmented and frequently disturbed. However, these same habitats can contain abundant resources, while lacking many common competitors and predators. The urban environment can have a direct impact on the species living there but can also have indirect effects on their parasites and pathogens. To date, relatively few studies have measured how fine‐scale spatial heterogeneity within urban landscapes can affect parasite transmission and persistence.Here, we surveyed 237 greenspaces across the urban environment of Edinburgh (UK) to investigate how fine‐scale variation in socio‐economic and ecological variables can affect red fox (Vulpes vulpes) marking behavior, gastrointestinal (GI) parasite prevalence, and parasite community diversity.We found that the presence and abundance of red fox fecal markings were nonuniformly distributed across greenspaces and instead were dependent on the ecological characteristics of a site. Specifically, common foraging areas were left largely unmarked, which indicates that suitable resting and denning sites may be limiting factor in urban environments. In addition, the amount of greenspace around each site was positively correlated with overall GI parasite prevalence, species richness, and diversity, highlighting the importance of greenspace (a commonly used measure of landscape connectivity) in determining the composition of the parasite community in urban areas.Our results suggest that fine‐scale variation within urban environments can be important for understanding the ecology of infectious diseases in urban wildlife and could have wider implication for the management of urban carnivores.
Highlights
Urban areas are expanding around the world due to both the increase in overall human population size and the trend of migration from the countryside to larger settlements (United Nations, 2008)
Our results suggest that fine-scale variation within urban environments can be important for understanding the ecology of infectious diseases in urban wildlife and could have wider implication for the management of urban carnivores
Using a comprehensive, repeated survey of greenspaces throughout the urban landscape of Edinburgh, we found evidence that fine-scale landscape variation plays important roles in determining both red fox marking patterns and their gastrointestinal parasite infection community in Edinburgh
Summary
Urban areas are expanding around the world due to both the increase in overall human population size and the trend of migration from the countryside to larger settlements (United Nations, 2008). There has increased effort to identify more generalizable patterns about the impact of urbanization on the structure and dynamics of parasite communities (see, e.g., Murray et al, 2019; Werner & Nunn, 2020) These studies have focused on comparing urban to rural landscapes, without taking into count the enormous variation in the physical and biological composition of urban areas, which leads to highly variable urban ecological communities (McKinney, 2006). We used fine spatial-scale metrics that included both human socio-economic variables (i.e., human population density, traffic counts, and greenspace) and ecological variables (i.e., the presence of other wildlife species and habitat characteristics), to capture the complex biotic and abiotic structure of the urban environment and investigate their relationship with parasite diversity and infection prevalence. Our goal was to identify variables drive patterns of GI parasite infection in the urban landscape, in order to provide an objective and quantifiable measure of urbanity, as to improve comparability and repeatability of urban disease ecology studies
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