Assessing urbanization influences on functional connectivity and color patterns of Neotropical birds

• Grant number: 19/07534-7
• Support type: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Effective date (Start): December 16, 2019
• Effective date (End): March 21, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Milton Cezar Ribeiro
• Grantee: Gabriela Rosa
• Supervisor abroad: Ian Macgregor Fors
• Home Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Local de pesquisa : Instituto de Ecología (INECOL), Mexico
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/06773-5 - Influences of landscape configuration, noise and vegetation structure on birds in a neotropical city, BP.MS

Abstract

Bird color variation was analyzed mainly at large geographical scales but, referring to urban areas, there is a gap on this topic. Although there is a study that found that urbanization leads to the homogenization of bird color, the same doesn't seem to happen in Neotropical urban landscapes, where it is possible to observe several colorful birds. In this way, this project aims to assess and to compare the influences of urban landscape configuration on color patterns of birds in two medium-sized Neotropical cities: Bauru (São Paulo, Brazil) and Xalapa (Veracruz, Mexico). We also intend to assess landscape connectivity in both cities, testing different approaches of landscape analysis. Our hypothesis 1 is that landscape configuration (characterized by percentage of impervious cover, the tree density, the size urban parks and connectivity) are not related to the homogenization of bird colors. Our hypothesis 2 is that the city with higher connectivity (dPC) will present the higher percentage of bird species of total municipality living within urban areas. To calculate landscape connectivity, we will simulate Multiple Path Corridors (MPC), using the LSCorridors software (LSCORR). With the results we will calculate the Connectivity Probability Index (dPC) using the Conefor software. To analyze the bird communities in the two cities, we will use data collected in Bauru during the Master's project and data available from INECOL. For data analysis, we will use Generalized Linear Model (GLM), considering different spatial scales. Then, for each regression, we will calculate the Akaike information criterion for small samples (AICc), with the ”AIC and the wAIC. Models.