Urban conservation hotspots: predation release allows the grassland-specialist burrowing owl to perform better in the city.

ABSTRACT: Although habitat transformation is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss, there are many examples of species successfully occupying and even proliferating in highly human-modified habitats such are the cities. Thus, there is an increasing interest in understanding the drivers favoring urban life for some species. Here, we show how the low richness and abundance of predators in urban areas may explain changes in the habitat selection pattern of a grassland specialist species, the burrowing owl Athene cunicularia, toward urban habitats. Predation release improves the demographic parameters of urban individuals, thus favoring an increment in the breeding density of the species in urban areas that accounts for the apparent positive selection of this habitat in detriment of the more natur

SUBMITTER: Rebolo-Ifran N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5471179 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature