1
|
Watson H, Nilsson JÅ, Smith E, Ottosson F, Melander O, Hegemann A, Urhan U, Isaksson C. Urbanisation-associated shifts in the avian metabolome within the annual cycle. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2024; 944:173624. [PMID: 38821291 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173624] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2024] [Revised: 05/07/2024] [Accepted: 05/27/2024] [Indexed: 06/02/2024]
Abstract
While organisms have evolved to cope with predictable changes in the environment, the rapid rate of current global change presents numerous novel and unpredictable stressors to which organisms have had less time to adapt. To persist in the urban environment, organisms must modify their physiology, morphology and behaviour accordingly. Metabolomics offers great potential for characterising organismal responses to natural and anthropogenic stressors at the systems level and can be applied to any species, even without genomic knowledge. Using metabolomic profiling of blood, we investigated how two closely related species of passerine bird respond to the urban environment. Great tits Parus major and blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus residing in urban and forest habitats were sampled during the breeding (spring) and non-breeding (winter) seasons across replicated sites in southern Sweden. During breeding, differences in the plasma metabolome between urban and forest birds were characterised by higher levels of amino acids in urban-dwelling tits and higher levels of fatty acyls in forest-dwelling tits. The suggested higher rates of fatty acid oxidation in forest tits could be driven by habitat-associated differences in diet and could explain the higher reproductive investment and success of forest tits. High levels of amino acids in breeding urban tits could reflect the lack of lipid-rich caterpillars in the urban environment and a dietary switch to protein-rich spiders, which could be of benefit for tackling inflammation and oxidative stress associated with pollution. In winter, metabolomic profiles indicated lower overall levels of amino acids and fatty acyls in urban tits, which could reflect relaxed energetic demands in the urban environment. Our metabolomic profiling of two urban-adapted species suggests that their metabolism is modified by urban living, though whether these changes represent adaptative or non-adaptive mechanisms to cope with anthropogenic challenges remains to be determined.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Hannah Watson
- Department of Biology, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden.
| | | | - Einar Smith
- Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, 214 28 Malmö, Sweden
| | - Filip Ottosson
- Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, 214 28 Malmö, Sweden
| | - Olle Melander
- Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, 214 28 Malmö, Sweden
| | - Arne Hegemann
- Department of Biology, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden
| | - Utku Urhan
- Department of Biology, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden
| | | |
Collapse
|
2
|
Grames EM, Montgomery GA, Youngflesh C, Tingley MW, Elphick CS. The effect of insect food availability on songbird reproductive success and chick body condition: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ecol Lett 2023; 26:658-673. [PMID: 36798988 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14178] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2022] [Revised: 11/14/2022] [Accepted: 12/06/2022] [Indexed: 02/18/2023]
Abstract
Reports of declines in abundance and biomass of insects and other invertebrates from around the world have raised concerns about food limitation that could have profound impacts for insectivorous species. Food availability can clearly affect species; however, there is considerable variation among studies in whether this effect is evident, and thus a lack of clarity over the generality of the relationship. To understand how decreased food availability due to invertebrate declines will affect bird populations, we conducted a systematic review and used meta-analytic structural equation modelling, which allowed us to treat our core variables of interest as latent variables estimated by the diverse ways in which researchers measure fecundity and chick body condition. We found a moderate positive effect of food availability on chick body condition and a strong positive effect on reproductive success. We also found a negative relationship between chick body condition and reproductive success. Our results demonstrate that food is generally a limiting factor for breeding songbirds. Our analysis also provides evidence for a consistent trade-off between chick body condition and reproductive success, demonstrating the complexity of trophic dynamics important for these vital rates.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Eliza M Grames
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA
- Department of Biology, University of Nevada Reno, Reno, Nevada, USA
| | - Graham A Montgomery
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Casey Youngflesh
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Michigan State University, Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
| | - Morgan W Tingley
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
| | - Chris S Elphick
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Corsini M, Leanza P, Rodewald AD, Sudyka J, Dhondt AA, Szulkin M. Coping with novelty across an urban mosaic: Provisioning latency increases closer to roads and is associated with species-specific reproductive success in two urban adapters. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2022; 847:157450. [PMID: 35863574 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157450] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2022] [Revised: 07/11/2022] [Accepted: 07/13/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Most research on urban avian ecology has focused on population- and community-level phenomena, whereas fewer studies have examined how urbanization affects individual behavioral responses to a sudden and novel stimulus, and how those translate to fitness. We measured between-individual variation in provisioning latency in two urban adapters - great tits and blue tits - in response to an infrared camera installed in the nestbox, encountered when offspring in the nest were at the peak of food demand (9-10-days old). For each nestbox, we quantified urbanization as intensity in human activity, distance to road and proportion of impervious surface area. In both species, provisioning latency increased closer to roads. Moreover, increased provisioning latency when exposed to a novel object was associated with higher reproductive success in great tits whose nestboxes were surrounded by high amounts of impervious surface. In contrast, increased provisioning latency was consistently associated with lower reproductive success in blue tits. Our results suggest that provisioning latency changes in relation to the environment surrounding the nest, and may be context- and species-specific when exposed to a novel stimulus, such as a novel object in the nest. To better understand the role of initial behavioral responses towards novelty across an individual's lifetime and, ultimately, its impact on fitness in the urban mosaic, further research explicitly testing different behavioral responses across the entire breeding cycle in wild model systems is needed.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Michela Corsini
- Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, ul. Banacha 2c, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland; Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, 14850, NY, USA.
| | - Pietro Leanza
- Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, ul. Banacha 2c, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland
| | - Amanda D Rodewald
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, 14850, NY, USA; Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14850, NY, USA
| | - Joanna Sudyka
- Institute of Environmental Sciences, Gronostajowa 7, 30-387 Krakow, Poland
| | - André A Dhondt
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, 14850, NY, USA; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14850, NY, USA
| | - Marta Szulkin
- Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, ul. Banacha 2c, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Capilla‐Lasheras P, Thompson MJ, Sánchez‐Tójar A, Haddou Y, Branston CJ, Réale D, Charmantier A, Dominoni DM. A global meta-analysis reveals higher variation in breeding phenology in urban birds than in their non-urban neighbours. Ecol Lett 2022; 25:2552-2570. [PMID: 36136999 PMCID: PMC9826320 DOI: 10.1111/ele.14099] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2022] [Accepted: 08/18/2022] [Indexed: 01/11/2023]
Abstract
Cities pose a major ecological challenge for wildlife worldwide. Phenotypic variation, which can result from underlying genetic variation or plasticity, is an important metric to understand eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change. Recent work suggests that urban populations might have higher levels of phenotypic variation than non-urban counterparts. This prediction, however, has never been tested across species nor over a broad geographical range. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of the avian literature to compare urban versus non-urban means and variation in phenology (i.e. lay date) and reproductive effort (i.e. clutch size, number of fledglings). First, we show that urban populations reproduce earlier and have smaller broods than non-urban conspecifics. Second, we show that urban populations have higher phenotypic variation in laying date than non-urban populations. This result arises from differences between populations within breeding seasons, conceivably due to higher landscape heterogeneity in urban habitats. These findings reveal a novel effect of urbanisation on animal life histories with potential implications for species adaptation to urban environments (which will require further investigation). The higher variation in phenology in birds subjected to urban disturbance could result from plastic responses to a heterogeneous environment, or from higher genetic variation in phenology, possibly linked to higher evolutionary potential.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Pablo Capilla‐Lasheras
- School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary MedicineUniversity of GlasgowGlasgowUK
| | - Megan J. Thompson
- Département des Sciences BiologiquesUniversité du Québec à MontréalMontrealCanada,Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et EvolutiveUniversité de Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRDMontpellierFrance
| | | | - Yacob Haddou
- School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary MedicineUniversity of GlasgowGlasgowUK
| | - Claire J. Branston
- School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary MedicineUniversity of GlasgowGlasgowUK
| | - Denis Réale
- Département des Sciences BiologiquesUniversité du Québec à MontréalMontrealCanada
| | - Anne Charmantier
- Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et EvolutiveUniversité de Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRDMontpellierFrance
| | - Davide M. Dominoni
- School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary MedicineUniversity of GlasgowGlasgowUK
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Gabor C, Lindström J, Macias Garcia C. Using behavioural ecology to explore adaptive responses to anthropogenic change — introduction. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s00265-022-03204-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/02/2022]
|