Abstract
Habitat loss and fragmentation are listed among the most significant effects of urbanization, which is regarded as an important threat to wildlife. Owls are the top predators in most terrestrial habitats, and their presence is a reliable indicator of ecosystem quality and complexity. However, influence of urbanization on owl communities, anthropogenic noise in particular, has not been investigated so far. The aim of this study was to identify the role of noise and landcover heterogeneity in the species richness of owl assemblage in the urban ecosystem. Owls were surveyed in the city of Kraków (southern Poland) on 65 randomly selected sample plots (1 km2). The area of main landcover types, landcover diversity index, mean size of landcover patch, and nocturnal noise level were defined within the sample plots and correlated with owl species richness. Five owl species were recorded in the study area with forests as the dominant landcover type for Tawny and Ural owls, grasslands for Long-eared and Barn owls, and gardens for Little owls. In total, 52% of sample plots were occupied by at least one species (1–3 species per plot). The number of owl species was positively correlated with landcover diversity index and negatively correlated with nocturnal noise emission. This study demonstrates that species richness of owls in urban areas may be shaped by landcover heterogeneity and limited by noise intensity. This indicates that noise changes top predator assemblage, which in consequence may disturb predator-prey interactions within human-transformed habitats.
Highlights
Rapid growth in human population and an increase in urbanization means that urban environments are becoming significant terrestrial ecosystems, which is anticipated to become the dominant ecosystem at the global scale (Melchiorri et al 2018)
The total number of owl species recorded in sample plots increased with increasing landcover diversity index (Table 2; Fig. 4), which was an apparent consequence of the varied habitat preferences of the particular owl species (Table 1; Fig. 3), but decreased with increasing level of anthropogenic noise level (Table 2; Fig. 4)
Results of this study demonstrate that urban environments are settled by a relatively rich owl community, which uses various
Summary
Rapid growth in human population and an increase in urbanization means that urban environments are becoming significant terrestrial ecosystems, which is anticipated to become the dominant ecosystem at the global scale (Melchiorri et al 2018). Noise could reduce hunting efficiency of listening predators (Francis et al 2012b; Mason et al 2016; Senzaki et al 2016; Agha et al 2017) and impair the anti-predatory behaviors of listening prey (Shannon et al 2016; Petrelli et al 2017). This could force predators to change foraging techniques (Mason et al 2016) and/or avoid habitats under high noise levels (Fröhlich and Ciach 2017, 2018). Noise could alter ecosystem functioning and services (Francis et al 2012a)
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