Urbanization creates novel ecological spaces where some species thrive. Geographical urbanization promotes human–wildlife conflict; however, we know relatively little about the drivers of biological urbanization, which poses impediments for sound wildlife management and conservation action. Flying-foxes are extremely mobile and move nomadically in response to flowering resources, but are now increasingly found in urban areas, for reasons that are poorly understood. To investigate the mechanisms behind flying-fox urbanization, we examined the movement of 99 satellite tracked grey-headed flying-foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus) over 1 year in urban versus non-urban environments. We found that tracked individuals preferentially visited major-urban roosts, exhibited higher fidelity to major-urban roosts, and foraged over shorter distances when roosting in major-urban areas. In contrast to other colonial species, there were no density-dependent effects of colony size on foraging distance, suggesting that at a landscape scale, flying-foxes distribute themselves across roosts in an ideal-free manner, minimizing competition over urban and non-urban foraging resources. Yet, males consistently foraged over shorter distances than females, suggesting that at a local scale foraging distances reflect competitive inequalities between individuals. Overall, our study supports the hypothesis that flying-fox urbanization is driven by increased spatiotemporal availability of food resources in urban areas; however, unlike in other species, it is likely a consequence of increased urban visitation by nomadic individuals rather than a subset of the population becoming “urban residents” per se. We discuss the implications of the movement behavior we report for the conservation and management of highly mobile species.

中文翻译：

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城市里的快餐？游牧飞狐在城市地区通勤时间减少，逗留时间更长

城市化创造了一些物种繁衍的新生态空间。地理城市化助长了人类与野生动物的冲突；然而，我们对生物城市化的驱动因素知之甚少，这对健全的野生动物管理和保护行动构成了障碍。狐蝠的机动性极强，并且为了响应开花资源而游牧，但现在越来越多地出现在城市地区，原因尚不清楚。为了研究飞狐城市化背后的机制，我们检查了 99 颗卫星跟踪的灰头飞狐 (Pteropus poliocephalus) 在 1 年内在城市与非城市环境中的运动。我们发现被跟踪的个体优先访问主要城市栖息地，对主要城市栖息地表现出更高的忠诚度，当栖息在主要城市地区时，它们会在较短的距离内觅食。与其他殖民地物种相比，殖民地大小对觅食距离没有密度依赖性影响，这表明在景观尺度上，狐蝠以无理想的方式分布在栖息地中，最大限度地减少了对城市和非城市的竞争觅食资源。然而，雄性的觅食距离始终比雌性短，这表明在局部范围内，觅食距离反映了个体之间的竞争不平等。总体而言，我们的研究支持这样的假设，即飞狐城市化是由城市地区食物资源的时空可用性增加所驱动的。然而，与其他物种不同的是，这可能是游牧个人增加了城市访问的结果，而不是一部分人口本身成为“城市居民”。我们讨论了我们报告的运动行为对高度流动物种的保护和管理的影响。