Abstract Global urbanization processes have highlighted the importance of understanding the effects of urban habitats on animal behavior. Behavioral changes are usually evaluated along an urbanization gradient, comparing urban and rural populations. However, this metric fails to consider heterogeneity between urban habitats that can differ significantly in their characteristics, such as their level of environmental variability. We suggest incorporating dimensions of environmental variability into the urbanization metric when evaluating behavioral changes. We tested the importance of both level of urbanization and level of urban change (i.e., the rate of anthropogenic changes measured as the change in the level of urbanization over time) on animals’ behavioral flexibility by comparing reversal learning abilities in house sparrows from sites differing in the rate of urbanization and urban change levels. We show that at least for males, urban change better explains levels of behavioral flexibility than urbanization level. We further show that urban change corresponds to other behavioral traits such as scrounging behavior and foraging activity. Thus, considering environmental stability and predictability in the form of urban changes can help better understand the mechanisms allowing behavioral changes and adaptations to urban environments. Evaluating the dynamics of the urban built environment could provide a better metric with which to understand urbanization effects on wildlife behavior and an important next step in urban ecology.

中文翻译：

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环境变异性作为城市环境中行为灵活性的预测指标

摘要 全球城市化进程凸显了了解城市栖息地对动物行为影响的重要性。行为变化通常沿着城市化梯度进行评估，比较城市和农村人口。然而，该指标未能考虑城市栖息地之间的异质性，这些栖息地的特征可能存在显着差异，例如环境变异程度。我们建议在评估行为变化时将环境变化的维度纳入城市化指标。我们测试了城市化水平和城市变化水平的重要性（即，通过比较来自不同城市化率和城市变化水平的地点的麻雀的逆向学习能力，人为变化率测量为城市化水平随时间的变化）对动物行为灵活性的影响。我们表明，至少对于男性而言，城市变化比城市化水平更能解释行为灵活性水平。我们进一步表明，城市变化与其他行为特征相对应，例如搜寻行为和觅食活动。因此，以城市变化的形式考虑环境稳定性和可预测性有助于更好地理解允许行为改变和适应城市环境的机制。