Dataset Information

Urbanisation generates multiple trait syndromes for terrestrial animal taxa worldwide.

ABSTRACT: Cities can host significant biological diversity. Yet, urbanisation leads to the loss of habitats, species, and functional groups. Understanding how multiple taxa respond to urbanisation globally is essential to promote and conserve biodiversity in cities. Using a dataset encompassing six terrestrial faunal taxa (amphibians, bats, bees, birds, carabid beetles and reptiles) across 379 cities on 6 continents, we show that urbanisation produces taxon-specific changes in trait composition, with traits related to reproductive strategy showing the strongest response. Our findings suggest that urbanisation results in four trait syndromes (mobile generalists, site specialists, central place foragers, and mobile specialists), with resources associated with reproduction and diet likely driving patterns in traits associated with mobility and body size. Functional diversity measures showed varied responses, leading to shifts in trait space likely driven by critical resource distribution and abundance, and taxon-specific trait syndromes. Maximising opportunities to support taxa with different urban trait syndromes should be pivotal in conservation and management programmes within and among cities. This will reduce the likelihood of biotic homogenisation and helps ensure that urban environments have the capacity to respond to future challenges. These actions are critical to reframe the role of cities in global biodiversity loss.

SUBMITTER: Hahs AK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10406945 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Urbanisation generates multiple trait syndromes for terrestrial animal taxa worldwide.

Hahs Amy K AK Fournier Bertrand B Aronson Myla F J MFJ Nilon Charles H CH Herrera-Montes Adriana A Salisbury Allyson B AB Threlfall Caragh G CG Rega-Brodsky Christine C CC Lepczyk Christopher A CA La Sorte Frank A FA MacGregor-Fors Ian I Scott MacIvor J J Jung Kirsten K Piana Max R MR Williams Nicholas S G NSG Knapp Sonja S Vergnes Alan A Acevedo Aldemar A AA Gainsbury Alison M AM Rainho Ana A Hamer Andrew J AJ Shwartz Assaf A Voigt Christian C CC Lewanzik Daniel D Lowenstein David M DM O'Brien David D Tommasi Desiree D Pineda Eduardo E Carpenter Ela Sita ES Belskaya Elena E Lövei Gábor L GL Makinson James C JC Coleman Joanna L JL Sadler Jon P JP Shroyer Jordan J Shapiro Julie Teresa JT Baldock Katherine C R KCR Ksiazek-Mikenas Kelly K Matteson Kevin C KC Barrett Kyle K Siles Lizette L Aguirre Luis F LF Armesto Luis Orlando LO Zalewski Marcin M Herrera-Montes Maria Isabel MI Obrist Martin K MK Tonietto Rebecca K RK Gagné Sara A SA Hinners Sarah J SJ Latty Tanya T Surasinghe Thilina D TD Sattler Thomas T Magura Tibor T Ulrich Werner W Elek Zoltan Z Castañeda-Oviedo Jennifer J Torrado Ricardo R Kotze D Johan DJ Moretti Marco M

Nature communications 20230807 1

Cities can host significant biological diversity. Yet, urbanisation leads to the loss of habitats, species, and functional groups. Understanding how multiple taxa respond to urbanisation globally is essential to promote and conserve biodiversity in cities. Using a dataset encompassing six terrestrial faunal taxa (amphibians, bats, bees, birds, carabid beetles and reptiles) across 379 cities on 6 continents, we show that urbanisation produces taxon-specific changes in trait composition, with trai ...[more]

PMID: 37550318

Similar Datasets

Project description:Ecological trait data are essential for understanding the broad-scale distribution of biodiversity and its response to global change. For animals, diet represents a fundamental aspect of species' evolutionary adaptations, ecological and functional roles, and trophic interactions. However, the importance of diet for macroevolutionary and macroecological dynamics remains little explored, partly because of the lack of comprehensive trait datasets. We compiled and evaluated a comprehensive global dataset of diet preferences of mammals ("MammalDIET"). Diet information was digitized from two global and cladewide data sources and errors of data entry by multiple data recorders were assessed. We then developed a hierarchical extrapolation procedure to fill-in diet information for species with missing information. Missing data were extrapolated with information from other taxonomic levels (genus, other species within the same genus, or family) and this extrapolation was subsequently validated both internally (with a jack-knife approach applied to the compiled species-level diet data) and externally (using independent species-level diet information from a comprehensive continentwide data source). Finally, we grouped mammal species into trophic levels and dietary guilds, and their species richness as well as their proportion of total richness were mapped at a global scale for those diet categories with good validation results. The success rate of correctly digitizing data was 94%, indicating that the consistency in data entry among multiple recorders was high. Data sources provided species-level diet information for a total of 2033 species (38% of all 5364 terrestrial mammal species, based on the IUCN taxonomy). For the remaining 3331 species, diet information was mostly extrapolated from genus-level diet information (48% of all terrestrial mammal species), and only rarely from other species within the same genus (6%) or from family level (8%). Internal and external validation showed that: (1) extrapolations were most reliable for primary food items; (2) several diet categories ("Animal", "Mammal", "Invertebrate", "Plant", "Seed", "Fruit", and "Leaf") had high proportions of correctly predicted diet ranks; and (3) the potential of correctly extrapolating specific diet categories varied both within and among clades. Global maps of species richness and proportion showed congruence among trophic levels, but also substantial discrepancies between dietary guilds. MammalDIET provides a comprehensive, unique and freely available dataset on diet preferences for all terrestrial mammals worldwide. It enables broad-scale analyses for specific trophic levels and dietary guilds, and a first assessment of trait conservatism in mammalian diet preferences at a global scale. The digitalization, extrapolation and validation procedures could be transferable to other trait data and taxa.

Dataset Information

Urbanisation generates multiple trait syndromes for terrestrial animal taxa worldwide.

Publications

Urbanisation generates multiple trait syndromes for terrestrial animal taxa worldwide.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets