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Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization
Arboreal marsupials play an essential role in ecosystem function including regulating insect and plant populations, facilitating pollen and seed dispersal and acting as a prey source for higher-order carnivores in Australian environments. Primarily, research has focused on their biology, ecology and...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946675/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24608165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091049 |
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author | Isaac, Bronwyn White, John Ierodiaconou, Daniel Cooke, Raylene |
author_facet | Isaac, Bronwyn White, John Ierodiaconou, Daniel Cooke, Raylene |
author_sort | Isaac, Bronwyn |
collection | PubMed |
description | Arboreal marsupials play an essential role in ecosystem function including regulating insect and plant populations, facilitating pollen and seed dispersal and acting as a prey source for higher-order carnivores in Australian environments. Primarily, research has focused on their biology, ecology and response to disturbance in forested and urban environments. We used presence-only species distribution modelling to understand the relationship between occurrences of arboreal marsupials and eco-geographical variables, and to infer habitat suitability across an urban gradient. We used post-proportional analysis to determine whether increasing urbanization affected potential habitat for arboreal marsupials. The key eco-geographical variables that influenced disturbance intolerant species and those with moderate tolerance to disturbance were natural features such as tree cover and proximity to rivers and to riparian vegetation, whereas variables for disturbance tolerant species were anthropogenic-based (e.g., road density) but also included some natural characteristics such as proximity to riparian vegetation, elevation and tree cover. Arboreal marsupial diversity was subject to substantial change along the gradient, with potential habitat for disturbance-tolerant marsupials distributed across the complete gradient and potential habitat for less tolerant species being restricted to the natural portion of the gradient. This resulted in highly-urbanized environments being inhabited by a few generalist arboreal marsupial species. Increasing urbanization therefore leads to functional simplification of arboreal marsupial assemblages, thus impacting on the ecosystem services they provide. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3946675 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-39466752014-03-10 Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization Isaac, Bronwyn White, John Ierodiaconou, Daniel Cooke, Raylene PLoS One Research Article Arboreal marsupials play an essential role in ecosystem function including regulating insect and plant populations, facilitating pollen and seed dispersal and acting as a prey source for higher-order carnivores in Australian environments. Primarily, research has focused on their biology, ecology and response to disturbance in forested and urban environments. We used presence-only species distribution modelling to understand the relationship between occurrences of arboreal marsupials and eco-geographical variables, and to infer habitat suitability across an urban gradient. We used post-proportional analysis to determine whether increasing urbanization affected potential habitat for arboreal marsupials. The key eco-geographical variables that influenced disturbance intolerant species and those with moderate tolerance to disturbance were natural features such as tree cover and proximity to rivers and to riparian vegetation, whereas variables for disturbance tolerant species were anthropogenic-based (e.g., road density) but also included some natural characteristics such as proximity to riparian vegetation, elevation and tree cover. Arboreal marsupial diversity was subject to substantial change along the gradient, with potential habitat for disturbance-tolerant marsupials distributed across the complete gradient and potential habitat for less tolerant species being restricted to the natural portion of the gradient. This resulted in highly-urbanized environments being inhabited by a few generalist arboreal marsupial species. Increasing urbanization therefore leads to functional simplification of arboreal marsupial assemblages, thus impacting on the ecosystem services they provide. Public Library of Science 2014-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC3946675/ /pubmed/24608165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091049 Text en © 2014 Isaac et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Isaac, Bronwyn White, John Ierodiaconou, Daniel Cooke, Raylene Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization |
title | Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization |
title_full | Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization |
title_fullStr | Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization |
title_full_unstemmed | Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization |
title_short | Simplification of Arboreal Marsupial Assemblages in Response to Increasing Urbanization |
title_sort | simplification of arboreal marsupial assemblages in response to increasing urbanization |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3946675/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24608165 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091049 |
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