Precipitation is the dominant driver for bird species richness, phylogenetic and functional structure in university campuses in northern China

Chenxia Liang,Na Wang,Guisheng Yang,Bin Pan,Jun Liu,Gang Feng,Jie Yang

doi:10.1186/s40657-020-00212-x

Chenxia Liang, Na Wang + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40657-020-00212-x

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Abstract

BackgroundAlthough urbanization is threatening biodiversity worldwide, the increasing green urban spaces could harbor relatively high biodiversity. Therefore, how to maintain the biodiversity in urban ecosystem is crucial for sustainable urban planning and management, especially in arid and semiarid regions with relatively fragile environment and low biodiversity. Here, for the first time we linked species richness, phylogenetic and functional structure of bird assemblages in university campuses in northern China with plant species richness, glacial-interglacial climate change, contemporary climate, and anthropogenic factors to compare their relative roles in shaping urban bird diversity.MethodsBird surveys were conducted in 20 university campuses across Inner Mongolia, China. Ordinary least squares models and simultaneous autoregressive models were used to assess the relationships between bird species richness, phylogenetic and functional structure with environmental factors. Structural equation models were used to capture the direct and indirect effects of these factors on the three components of bird diversity.ResultsSingle-variable simultaneous autoregressive models showed that mean annual precipitation was consistently a significant driver for bird species richness, phylogenetic and functional structure. Meanwhile, mean annual temperature and plant species richness were also significant predictors for bird species richness.ConclusionsThis study suggests that campuses with warmer and wetter climate as well as more woody plant species could harbor more bird species. In addition, wetter campuses tended to sustain over-dispersed phylogenetic and functional structure. Our findings emphasize the dominant effect of precipitation on bird diversity distribution in this arid and semiarid region, even in the urban ecosystem.

Highlights

Urbanization is threatening biodiversity worldwide, the increasing green urban spaces could harbor relatively high biodiversity
Twenty-nine resident bird species were recorded in the 20 university campuses, accounting for 26% of the resident birds in Inner Mongolia
Bird species richness significantly increased with higher precipitation, while phylogenetic and functional structure significantly decreased with precipitation (Fig. 1; Table 1), indicating there were less birds with more clustered structure of Species richness Coef_ols r2_ols

Summary

Introduction

Urbanization is threatening biodiversity worldwide, the increasing green urban spaces could harbor relatively high biodiversity. Urban green spaces may be considered as important “hotspots” of biodiversity, which could harbor high bird diversity (Cornelis and Hermy 2004; Ferenc et al 2014; Zhang et al 2018; Liu et al 2019). Many anthropogenic drivers are crucial for urban bird diversity, e.g., area and age of green spaces, population density, number of buildings, and land-cover (Evans et al 2009; Aronson et al 2014; Huang et al 2015; Gagné et al 2016). A global study suggests that bird species density (number of species per km2) is negatively associated with the proportion of urban landcover in cities (Aronson et al 2014). It is widely reported that number of woody vegetation and complex vegetation structure is important for the maintenance of urban bird diversity (Evans et al 2009; Barth et al 2015)

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Discussion

Conclusion