Wildlife Responses to Urbanization: Patterns of Diversity and Community Structure in Built Environments

Abstract

As the study of biodiversity, the field of community ecology seeks to understand what factors govern the formation and maintenance of multispecies assemblages (i.e., how and why certain species coexist). The structure of communities is described by their diversity—comprised of richness (number of species present) and evenness (the relative abundance of each species)—and interactions among the constituent species. Communities are biotic components within ecosystems, and because cities can be viewed as an ecosystem (albeit one characterized by high-density human habitation and built structure), understanding how wildlife responds to the ever-increasing scope of urban development makes urban-community ecology an important component of contemporary wildlife science.

Appendices

Conclusion

Managing diversity is a key focus of wildlife biology, but it is an even more challenging endeavor when conducted in urban areas. Challenges arise both from complex and poorly understood inter-species relationships and from the difficulty of influencing human behaviors that drive many ecosystem processes. Effective planning and design for urban wildlife and for positive human–wildlife interactions must therefore include a social component (Chap. 6). Cross-disciplinary, team efforts among wildlife biologists, landscape architects, and land-use planners will become more common as urbanization occurs. Although these efforts will require unprecedented emphasis on communication (McIntyre 2011, Chap. 11), the commonalities across the globe of factors that structure urban communities may facilitate making action plans for urban biodiversity conservation. This chapter provides a basic understanding of community ecology needed to shape urban wildlife communities, while later chapters provide detailed examples of how to manipulate wildlife communities in urban areas and productively engage urban residents in those endeavors.

Community ecology is the science of biodiversity , interested in explaining how certain species can coexist whereas other combinations cannot, and why certain assemblages are stable whereas others are susceptible to invasion and alteration. Urbanization brings together species to create novel assemblages subject to novel regulation. As perhaps the main sign of the Anthropocene, urban ecosystems present wildlife scientists with many research opportunities that combine the familiar with the unique.

Acknowledgments

Much of my thinking about urban communities has come from my association with the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Project at Arizona State University.