Mobile animals transport nutrients and propagules across habitats, and are crucial for the functioning of food webs and for ecosystem services. Human activities such as urbanization can alter animal movement behavior, including site fidelity and resource use. Because many urban areas are adjacent to natural sites, mobile animals might connect natural and urban habitats. More generally, understanding animal movement patterns in urban areas can help predict how urban expansion will affect the roles of highly mobile animals in ecological processes. Here, we examined movements by a seasonally nomadic wading bird, the American white ibis (Eudocimus albus), in South Florida, USA. White ibis are colonial wading birds that forage on aquatic prey; in recent years, some ibis have shifted their behavior to forage in urban parks, where they are fed by people. We used a spatial network approach to investigate how individual movement patterns influence connectivity between urban and non-urban sites. We built a network of habitat connectivity using GPS tracking data from ibis during their non-breeding season and compared this network to simulated networks that assumed individuals moved indiscriminately with respect to habitat type. We found that the observed network was less connected than the simulated networks, that urban-urban and natural-natural connections were strong, and that individuals using urban sites had the least-variable habitat use. Importantly, the few ibis that used both urban and natural habitats contributed the most to connectivity. Habitat specialization in urban-acclimated wildlife could reduce the exchange of propagules and nutrients between urban and natural areas, which has consequences both for beneficial effects of connectivity such as gene flow and for detrimental effects such as the spread of contaminants or pathogens.

中文翻译：

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城市专业化通过高度流动的涉水鸟减少了栖息地的连通性

移动动物在栖息地之间运输营养物质和繁殖体，对于食物网的运作和生态系统服务至关重要。城市化等人类活动可以改变动物的运动行为，包括场地保真度和资源使用。由于许多城市地区与自然遗址相邻，移动动物可能将自然栖息地和城市栖息地联系起来。更一般地说，了解城市地区的动物运动模式有助于预测城市扩张将如何影响高度流动的动物在生态过程中的作用。在这里，我们检查了美国南佛罗里达州季节性游牧涉水鸟美洲白宜必思 (Eudocimus albus) 的运动。白鹮是群居涉水鸟，以水生猎物为食。近年来，一些宜必思已经将它们的行为转变为在城市公园觅食，由人们喂食。我们使用空间网络方法来研究个体运动模式如何影响城市和非城市站点之间的连通性。我们在非繁殖季节使用来自宜必思的 GPS 跟踪数据建立了一个栖息地连接网络，并将该网络与假设个体不分青红皂白地移动栖息地类型的模拟网络进行了比较。我们发现，观察到的网络比模拟网络的连通性低，城市-城市和自然-自然的联系很强，使用城市站点的个人对栖息地的使用变化最小。重要的是，少数同时使用城市和自然栖息地的宜必思酒店对连通性的贡献最大。城市适应野生动物的栖息地专业化可以减少城市和自然区域之间的繁殖体和养分交换，