Wildlife Affordances of Urban Infrastructure: A Framework to Understand Human-Wildlife Space Use

Eric S. Abelson,Rachel V. Blakey,Chase A. Niesner,Daniel T. Blumstein

doi:10.3389/fcosc.2021.774137

Abstract

Landscape affordances, what the environment offers an animal, are inherently species-specific to the extent that each taxon has unique needs and responses to landscape characteristics. Wildlife responses to landscape features range on a continuum from avoidance to attraction and quantifying these habits are the backbone of wildlife movement ecology. In anthropogenically modified landscapes, many taxa do not occupy areas heavily influenced by humans, while some species seem to flourish, such as coyotes (Canis latrans) and pigeons (Columba livia). Sufficient overlap in landscapes designed for human purposes (e.g., freeway underpasses, channelized waterways, and cemeteries) but which are also suitable for wildlife (e.g., by providing sources of food, shelter, and refuge) underlies wildlife persistence in urban areas and is increasingly important in the world's largest metropoles. Studying these overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife in cities provides a rich foundation for broadening human perceptions of cities as ecosystems that exhibit emergent hybridity, whereby certain anthropogenic features of urban landscapes can be used by wildlife even as they maintain their utility for humans. By examining scaling dynamics of the infrastructural signature, the phenomena of urban wildlife movement patterns conforming to the shapes of human infrastructural forms, we hope to expand on prior research in wildlife landscape ecology by stressing the importance of understanding the overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife. Further knowledge of the urban ecological commons is necessary to better design cities where emergent hybridity is leveraged toward the management goals of reducing human wildlife conflict and promoting biodiversity.

Highlights

AFFORDANCE AND EMERGENT HYBRIDITYAs cities grow in size, novel ecologies develop where wildlife exploit the human habits, forms and land cover types that are prevalent and intense in cities, while other wildlife previously native to these areas are filtered out by similar patterns of urbanization (Cooper et al, 2021)
Keeping in mind both the possibility of attraction and avoidance for specific species to urbanizing areas, we Wildlife Affordances of Urban Infrastructure suggest that one key to understanding wildlife persistence in the urban environment is to focus on the density and scaling of urban infrastructure
As centuries-long infrastructural projects begin to deteriorate in unexpected ways and the promises and potential perils of “green infrastructure” further come into focus (Tzoulas et al, 2007; Soulsbury and White, 2015), we believe attending to the ways wildlife are interacting with human infrastructural forms will invite more intentional, aware and proactive policy decisions regarding the relationship between city design and urban biodiversity, the management of human-wildlife conflict, and the possibility of complex and novel ecologies emerging as cities expand

Summary

INTRODUCTION

As cities grow in size, novel ecologies develop where wildlife exploit the human habits, forms and land cover types that are prevalent and intense in cities, while other wildlife previously native to these areas are filtered out by similar patterns of urbanization (Cooper et al, 2021). While coyote space use in wildlands remains relatively consistent in shape and size, highly urban coyote territories vary, shrinking into infrastructural spaces during the day and expanding into the broader urban landscape at night (Riley et al, 2003; Grubbs and Krausman, 2009; Thompson et al, 2021) Such emerging, dynamic, and hybrid human-wildlife spaces may be critical for wildlife persistence in these areas, and studying them is an opportunity to better understand the multispecies, urban ecological commons that sustains urban biodiversity and human society simultaneously. This two-step process is what distinguishes an affordance-based management approach from other management strategies, in that it combines a cognitive understanding of a given species sensorium with a focus on the affordances of the urban environment offered by specific urban infrastructural forms

CONCLUSIONS AND MANAGEMENT

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT