![]() Human disturbances change community composition and modify ecosystems. The impact of human modified landscapes on wildlife is an important but yet not well understood issue. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The Comunidad de Madrid, together with the European Social Fund, supports the TEG research group through the REMEDINAL Research Network (S-2009/AMB/1783). This study forms part of the CENIT-OASIS Project funded by a consortium of companies supported by the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (CENIT-2008 1016). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.įunding: AP was supported by a PhD grant of the Basque Government. Received: MaAccepted: JanuPublished: March 18, 2015Ĭopyright: © 2015 Planillo et al. PLoS ONE 10(3):Īcademic Editor: Antoni Margalida, University of Lleida, SPAIN Also, food availability may attract raptor species to risky areas such as motorways.Ĭitation: Planillo A, Kramer-Schadt S, Malo JE (2015) Transport Infrastructure Shapes Foraging Habitat in a Raptor Community. ![]() Finally, our cross-scale analysis revealed that the effect of transport infrastructures on the behavior of some species might be detectable only at a broad scale. Medium-sized opportunistic raptors increased their abundance near the traffic infrastructures, large scavenger raptors avoided areas with higher traffic values, and other species showed no direct response to traffic but to the presence of prey. ![]() Individual species showed different degrees of tolerance toward traffic, from higher abundance in areas with high traffic values to avoidance of it. Abundance, richness, and diversity values reached their maximum at medium traffic volumes and decreased at highest traffic volumes. At the community level, the traffic volume was the most relevant variable in the landscape for foraging habitat selection. Based on ecological hypotheses for foraging habitat selection, we built generalized linear mixed models, selected the best models according to Akaike Information Criterion and assessed variable importance by Akaike weights. We also analyzed whether the raptors’ response towards infrastructure depends on the spatial scale of observation, comparing the attraction or avoidance behavior of the species at the landscape scale with the response of individuals observed in the proximity of the infrastructure. In this paper, we analyzed raptors’ foraging habitat selection in response to conventional roads and high capacity motorways at the landscape scale, and compared their effects with those of other variables, such as habitat structure, food availability, and presence of potential interspecific competitors. Nonetheless, their effects on habitat selection by raptors are still poorly understood. Transport infrastructure elements are widespread and increasing in size and length in many countries, with the subsequent alteration of landscapes and wildlife communities.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |