Abstract
Persistence of animals in urban habitats, a stark environmental contrast to natural habitats, can be explained through evaluating the mechanisms behind organism-habitat interactions. One of the most notable effects of urbanization is the change in structural habitat; vegetation is removed and modified, favoring large trees and adding artificial structures in cities, which may alter how organismal preferences for aspects of the habitat are realized. We evaluated the mechanisms by which structural habitat changes associated with urbanization alter the available vegetation and substrates on which two species of Anolis lizards perch in urban and natural forest sites in Miami, FL. We also experimentally assessed habitat preference in the lab to establish the mechanism behind habitat selection. We found that vegetation was broader in urban areas compared to natural habitats, and artificial structures in urban areas were more than twice the diameter of available natural perches. Lizards expressed their preference for broad perches by selecting broader vegetation and artificial structures compared to their availability in both habitats. With the increased availability of broad substrates in urban areas, perch diameters selected by lizards resulted in an expansion of this aspect of the structural habitat niche for both species. The two species differed, however, in other responses to altered urban habitats. Anolis cristatellus tended to avoid artificial substrates, whereas A. sagrei used both natural and artificial structures in proportion to their availabilities. This study provides a mechanistic explanation for how urbanization alters structural habitats, leading to niche expansion for organisms living in cities.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Miami-Dade Parks and Recreation department for permission to use Miami-Dade parks as study sites, Z. Chejanovski and J. Stroud for collecting and shipping lizards, and P. Griffith and the Montgomery Botanical Center for research sites and support. We thank E. Preisser and the Kolbe lab group for helpful comments on drafts on this manuscript.
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Protocols for use of lizards were approved by the URI Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (AN11–09-005). This work was funded by grants from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation (DEB-1354897), and the University of Rhode Island Enhancement of Graduate Research Award as well as funds from the University of Rhode Island. A. Battles was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow. M. Moniz participated in the URI Coastal Fellows Program during this project. We can think of no conflicts of interest for this work.
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Battles, A.C., Moniz, M. & Kolbe, J.J. Living in the big city: preference for broad substrates results in niche expansion for urban Anolis lizards. Urban Ecosyst 21, 1087–1095 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-018-0787-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-018-0787-1