Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems
Preserving biodiversity in urban ecosystems has become an urgent conservation priority, given the rapid upsurge in global urbanization. As woody plants play essential ecological roles and provide psychological benefits to human city dwellers, their preservation is of particular interest to conservat...
Published in: | Scientific Reports |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551175/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 |
id |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8551175 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8551175 2023-05-15T13:00:38+02:00 Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems Natsukawa, Haruki Yuasa, Hiroki Komuro, Shizuko Sergio, Fabrizio 2021-10-27 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551175/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551175/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 2021-10-31T01:04:14Z Preserving biodiversity in urban ecosystems has become an urgent conservation priority, given the rapid upsurge in global urbanization. As woody plants play essential ecological roles and provide psychological benefits to human city dwellers, their preservation is of particular interest to conservation scientists. However, considering that extensive censuses of woody plants are resource-intensive, a key accomplishment is to find reliable conservation proxies that can be quickly used to locate biologically diverse areas. Here, we test the idea that sites occupied by apex predators can indicate high overall biodiversity, including high diversity of woody plants. To this end, we surveyed woody plant species within 500 m of Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) breeding sites in urban ecosystems of Japan and compared them with non-breeding control sites without goshawks. We found that goshawks successfully identified and signposted high levels of richness, abundance, and diversity of woody plants. Our findings show that sites occupied by top predatory species could be exploited as conservation proxies for high plant diversity. Due to their exigent ecological requirements, we would expect apex predators to be tied to high biodiversity levels in many other urban ecosystems worldwide. Text Accipiter gentilis Northern Goshawk PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 11 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Article |
spellingShingle |
Article Natsukawa, Haruki Yuasa, Hiroki Komuro, Shizuko Sergio, Fabrizio Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
topic_facet |
Article |
description |
Preserving biodiversity in urban ecosystems has become an urgent conservation priority, given the rapid upsurge in global urbanization. As woody plants play essential ecological roles and provide psychological benefits to human city dwellers, their preservation is of particular interest to conservation scientists. However, considering that extensive censuses of woody plants are resource-intensive, a key accomplishment is to find reliable conservation proxies that can be quickly used to locate biologically diverse areas. Here, we test the idea that sites occupied by apex predators can indicate high overall biodiversity, including high diversity of woody plants. To this end, we surveyed woody plant species within 500 m of Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) breeding sites in urban ecosystems of Japan and compared them with non-breeding control sites without goshawks. We found that goshawks successfully identified and signposted high levels of richness, abundance, and diversity of woody plants. Our findings show that sites occupied by top predatory species could be exploited as conservation proxies for high plant diversity. Due to their exigent ecological requirements, we would expect apex predators to be tied to high biodiversity levels in many other urban ecosystems worldwide. |
format |
Text |
author |
Natsukawa, Haruki Yuasa, Hiroki Komuro, Shizuko Sergio, Fabrizio |
author_facet |
Natsukawa, Haruki Yuasa, Hiroki Komuro, Shizuko Sergio, Fabrizio |
author_sort |
Natsukawa, Haruki |
title |
Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
title_short |
Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
title_full |
Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
title_fullStr |
Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
title_full_unstemmed |
Raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
title_sort |
raptor breeding sites indicate high plant biodiversity in urban ecosystems |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551175/ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 |
genre |
Accipiter gentilis Northern Goshawk |
genre_facet |
Accipiter gentilis Northern Goshawk |
op_source |
Sci Rep |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551175/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4 |
container_title |
Scientific Reports |
container_volume |
11 |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1766256133331222528 |