About This Project

Most urban ecology research is from the temperate zones. As a Peruvian-American scientist, I'd like to know whether patterns of change in bird biodiversity (like biotic homogenization, the simplification of bird communities) seen in temperate cities are also present in tropical areas. This project, one of my dissertation chapters, will assess how bird communities in the Peruvian Amazon and in the Pacific Coastal Desert change along urban gradients.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Earth has been fundamentally changed by the rise of human civilization, and nature has to adapt to those changes. One of the most drastic changes is urbanization. I'm interested in how bird diversity changes due to urbanization because it allows us to imagine a world where cities are also part of nature, while understanding how our actions are already affecting species. Scientists in temperate zones are already asking those questions, finding that in many of these cities the species in a bird community are more similar between cities than they are to their surroundings. This could mean that cities always filter out the same types of species so that only species like the pigeons can survive. However, there is very little known about cities in the tropics, and patterns could be different.

What is the significance of this project?

This project is important from both a scientific and a conservation point of view. It is an opportunity to examine how human actions affect areas with higher regional biodiversity differently and understand how these characteristics can lead to higher or lower resilience against landscape change. From a conservation point of view, urban areas are both a risk and an opportunity: they can lower biodiversity but they also provide homes for most humans in the world. By understanding how and when biotic homogenization occurs, we can construct cities that are inclusive of most biodiversity, bringing nature to human populations traditionally disconnected from nature.

What are the goals of the project?

To see how bird communities change along urbanization gradients, a field assistant and I will sample one large city, one small city, and one natural area situated along a road in two different neotropical environments: Peruvian Amazon (Iquitos, Nauta, and National Reserve Allpahuayo Mishana) and the Pacific Coastal Desert (Lima, Huacho, and NR Lomas de Lachay). In each place, we will register every bird we see and hear. Back in the lab, I will analyze the data by looking at which birds are most common in which site, what the differences between the bird species combinations are, and whether these patterns can be linked to any particular land environment variable (such as percent green area). I will also compare this to remote sensing work using eBird, a citizen science platform.