Commuters: A waterbird provides a new view of how species may utilize cities and wildlands

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dc.contributor.authorShlepr, Katherine R
dc.contributor.authorEvans, Betsy A
dc.contributor.authorGawlik, Dale E
dc.creator.orcidhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-6046-5131
dc.date.accessioned2024-02-15T21:36:49Z
dc.date.available2024-02-15T21:36:49Z
dc.date.issued2023-07-06
dc.description.abstractTraditional classifications of vertebrates’ responses to urbanization fail to capture the behaviour of those that rely on both urban and wildland resources for population persistence. Here, we use the wood stork (Mycteria americana), a species that makes daily foraging trips up to 74 km away from its nest, as an example of a previously unrecognized response to urbanization. We monitored nests and sampled diets at stork colonies in south Florida (USA) during 2014–2020 to investigate how storks use urban habitats. We found that urban development now comprises up to 51.6% of the land cover within the 30-km core foraging area surrounding colonies and that storks access alternative prey types within these urban areas. Our results also showed that urban-nesting storks outperformed wildland-nesting storks when the hydrological condition of the wetlands was suboptimal for foraging. Though storks still require healthy wetlands for population persistence, urban habitat benefitted storks when hydrological patterns were not ideal for prey production in wildlands. This ‘commuter’ response to urbanization, whereby individuals opt to utilize both urban and wildland resources within short time periods, may apply to other vertebrates with large home ranges.
dc.description.sponsorshipThis project was supported by the Florida Department of Transportation (BDV 27-922-02), the Waterbird Society’s Kushlan Award (2019) and the Harte Research Institute’s Crutchfield Fellowship Endowment (2021–2022).
dc.identifier.citationShlepr KR, Evans BA, Gawlik DE (2023) Commuters: a waterbird provides a new view of how species may utilize cities and wildlands. Environmental Conservation 50: 179–185. doi: 10.1017/ S0376892923000152
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892923000152
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1969.6/97754
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.rightsCC BY 4.0 DEED Attribution 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectadaptive response
dc.subjectanimal behaviour
dc.subjectanthropogenic resources
dc.subjecthabitat selection
dc.subjectphenotypic plasticity
dc.subjectprey switching
dc.subjecturban
dc.subjectwildland-urban interface
dc.titleCommuters: A waterbird provides a new view of how species may utilize cities and wildlands
dc.typeArticle

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