Trends in bird species richness, abundance and biomass along a tropical urbanization gradient

Impacts of urbanization on biodiversity are commonly studied using urbanization gradients which provide a space-for-time substitution in estimating consequences of urban expansion. Rates of urbanization and human population growth are high in tropical countries of the developing world, which also hold most of the world’s biodiversity hot-spots, yet few studies have considered biodiversity trends along urban gradients in these regions. Bird communities across a gradient of nine sites in Uganda, from the city centre of Kampala to outlying rural locations, were studied over a six year period. These sites were ordered along an urbanization gradient using Principle Components Analysis based on habitat variables estimated at each site. Bird species richness showed a decrease from rural to urban sites, a trend especially evident in forest birds. There was no clear pattern in total abundance, total biomass or biomass per individual along the gradient. However, this latter result was heavily influenced by a colony of Marabou Storks at one site. When this species was omitted, there was evidence of a positive trend with urbanization, showing that as species richness decreased, the bird community was increasingly dominated by larger species with increasing urbanization, which were mainly scavengers able to exploit human refuse. These results provide further support for the negative impacts of urbanization on species richness, but also demonstrate trends in abundance and biomass are variable across different regions. In particular, the increasing dominance of larger species in urban areas may be relevant to certain geographic and/or socioeconomic contexts.