Bird diversities and their responses to urbanization in China

Abstract

China has been experiencing remarkable urban expansion in recent decades. The rapid urbanization progress also drew much attention of researchers on urban birds and the effect of urbanization on birds. We summarized the papers on urban birds in China published from 1962 to 2014. To understand the urban bird diversities in China, we selected 17 cities across different bioregions even biogeographical realms whose bird diversities had been carefully surveyed and chose ten most abundant resident birds representing the urban birds of the cities. We measured the phylogenetic structure and the family diversity of ten species of each city and then examined their variations with the city's population, latitude, and longitude. The results showed that 49 species dwell in the 17 cities as the top 10 abundant birds which cover three orders and 20 families. Crows, starlings, tits, and bulbuls are the most abundant species in the urban areas in China. The cities, on the one hand, close in geography have close bird lists which implied that local fauna has important impacts on urban bird assemblages. On the other hand, some cities far apart also share close bird lists probably due to the process of homogenization of urbanization. The cities with higher latitudes usually support birds more discretely in phylogenetic structure, but with lower family diversity. We also reviewed the urbanization effects on the birds. Evidences showed significant patterns of birds in response to urbanization in China at community, species, and even individual levels.