Multi-scale use of lands providing anthropogenic resources by American Crows in an urbanizing landscape |
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Authors: | John C Withey John M Marzluff |
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Institution: | (1) College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, P.O. Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195-2100, USA;(2) Present address: Department of Biology, Lewis and Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR 97219-7899, USA |
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Abstract: | The conversion of forests and farmlands to human settlements has negative impacts on many native species, but also provides
resources that some species are able to exploit. American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), one such exploiter, create concern due to their impact as nest predators, disease hosts, and cultural harbingers of evil.
We used various measures of crow abundance and resource use to determine crows’ response to features of anthropogenic landscapes
in the Puget Sound region of the United States. We examined land cover and land use composition at three spatial scales: study
sites (up to 208 ha), crow home ranges within sites (18.1 ha), and local land cover (400 m2). At the study site and within-site scales crow abundance was strongly correlated with land cover providing anthropogenic
resources. In particular, crows were associated with the amount of ‘maintained forest’ cover, and were more likely to use
grass and shrub cover than forest or bare soil cover. Although crows did not show a generalized response to an edge variable,
they exhibited greater use of patchy habitat created by human settlements than of native forests. Radio-tagged territorial
adults used resources within their home ranges relatively evenly, suggesting resource selection had occurred at a larger spatial
scale. The land conversion pattern of new suburban and exurban settlements creates the mix of impervious surfaces and maintained
vegetation that crows use, and in our study area crow populations are expected to continue to increase.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
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Keywords: | Resource use Utilization distribution Urban ecology Spatial autocorrelation Habitat selection American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos Washington State |
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