Bird foraging is influenced by both risk and connectivity in urban parks

Abstract

Animal behaviour is increasingly seen as an integral component in maintaining connectivity within landscapes. Perceived predation risk causes changes in behaviour, differentially distributing individuals across landscapes, resulting in patchy habitat use. While intuitively these two ecological processes must be linked, they are often investigated in isolation. Here we investigate these two processes in a feeding experiment of small birds in semi-natural urban parks during winter. Using an information theoretic model selection approach, we found that adding connectivity measures to variables reflecting birds' perception of risk significantly improved our understanding of foraging and use in urban landscapes. Our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for both perceived risk and connectivity when measuring resource use.