An introduction to landscape and urban ecology: An avian haemosporida perspective

Abstract

The magnitude of both direct and indirect anthropogenic disturbances has altered all ecosystems across the globe. Human actions have triggered such extensive environmental consequences that an era has been coined to encompass them: the Anthropocene. This myriad of shifts has been abstracted in a unifying "global change" concept. Among the most worrisome components of the ongoing human-induced global change process, the following head the list: climate change, land-use change, biogeochemical cycle shifts, biological invasions, pollution, and urbanization. In this chapter, we (i) review some of the major global change drivers and consequences in Textboxes (i.e., climate change, land-use change, biological invasions, biogeochemical cycle shifts), (ii) introduce the urban ecology and landscape ecology disciplines, as well as their frameworks together with some general avian patterns, and (iii) concentrate on the avian malaria literature from tropical regions, providing an urban and landscape ecology focus to identify main findings and areas of opportunity for future research in the region.