Principles of Ecology (BIOL 330) Summer 2019 – Brodsky

Week 5 Assignment: Community Ecology

20 points – 10 questions

Name:

Instructions: Use the corresponding “Community Ecology” Powerpoint on Canvas to help you answer
these questions. You will also need “Week 5 Assignment.xls” Excel spreadsheet for data to analyze.
Please fill in the answers with red font. Save this document as a Word (.doc) or PDF file (.pdf) and
upload to Canvas by the due date.

Background: In this homework, you’ll use data collected in Baltimore, Maryland for the National
Science Foundation-funded Long-Term Ecological Research Project called the Baltimore Ecosystem
Study. Over 35 institutions across the United States participate in collecting data for BES, and Pittsburg
State is one of them! Dr. Brodsky has been a collaborator on this project since 2012, researching urban
bird diversity. One of the goals of this study is to analyze long-term trends in urban biodiversity to
improve our understanding of what makes a city sustainable. In this assignment, we’ll be analyzing a
portion of bird community data that BES has been collecting since 2002.

Part I. Describing Urban Bird Communities

1. The Excel spreadsheet contains information for bird communities at three locations in
Baltimore that we can classify as urban, suburban, and rural habitats. First, describe these bird
communities by calculating the following descriptive statistics. Fill in the table with your results:
(6 points)

Community Statistic Urban Suburban Rural

Total species abundance 11 21 10
Relative abundance of 0.09 0.23 0.1
the American Robin
Relative abundance of 0.45 0.09 0
European Starling
Species richness 4 species 10 species 7 species
Shannon Diversity (H’) 1.154 2.053 1.834

2. In Week 3, we learned how humans aid in the dispersal of nonnative invasive species (textbook
page 167). American robins are a species native to Baltimore, while European starlings are a
nonnative invasive species. By looking at the data, describe how their relative abundances
change across urban to rural habitats. Why do you think this pattern exists? (1 point)
a. The relative abundance of the nonnative species European Starlings is decreasing as we
go from urban to rural. This could be because European starling were intentionally first
introduced in New York city through human activity, the resulting interaction with the
native species in the community could have been detrimental. So same could have been
with the case of Baltimore. The European Starlings could be novel predators, or
competitors, and can increase the mortality rate, having a devastating effect on the
Principles of Ecology (BIOL 330) Summer 2019 – Brodsky

native target population and causing population decline or even extinct. Thereby
increasing European Starling population in urban area. They might have been competing
for food resources and shelter, as in urban areas the availability of food litters from
humans is abundant for Starlings to feed on and easy living on the high building with no
risk of predators.

3. Plot a rank-abundance curve for each habitat type on one graph. Remember to label your axes
and use the legend! Instructions on how to create a rank-abundance curve can be found in this
week’s Powerpoint and Chapter 16, Figure 16.1.
0.5
0.45
0.4
0.35
Relative Abundance

0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Rank

Urban Suburban Rural

a. Describe how the three communities differ in terms of their evenness. (1 point)
i. From graph we can see that urban community have more steeper rank
abundance curve which means it is not even in its community (i.e., a few species
dominant, and others are rare). Rural community have a small steep but mostly
even meaning that a few species (1-2 species) are dominant, but most species
are even. Suburban community is the most even meaning that all the species are
in equal amount.
4. Explain which community is more diverse. In your answer, describe how species richness,
relative abundance, and evenness contribute to the species diversity. (1 point)
a. Species richness refers to the number of species in an area. Species abundance refers to
the number of individuals per species. Evenness refers to equitability in the distribution
of individuals among the species.
Urban is composed of 4 species (richness) with two species with high relative species
abundance (dominant). The relative abundance of each species is more evenly
distributed than suburban and rural
Suburban is more species rich than rural community, and also more even. Suburban
community have even number of all species except American robin.
Principles of Ecology (BIOL 330) Summer 2019 – Brodsky

Therefore, suburban community is the most diverse. The number of species factors into
species diversity but the number of individuals in each species also contribute to the
species diversity.

Part II. Community Dynamics

5. We can view urbanization as a disturbance to the bird community. Create a graph that
illustrates change in species diversity (H’) over the urban – rural gradient. Your x-axis should
have the three habitat types, and the y-axis should be the Shannon Diversity index. Remember
to label your axes! (1 point)

Shannon Diversity Index

2.5

2
Shannon Diversity

1.5

0.5

0
Urban Suburban Rural
Community

6. Does this data follow the intermediate disturbance hypothesis? Why or why not? (1 point)
a. Yes, this does follow intermediate disturbance hypothesis as it can be seen that
suburban has more species diversity than rural and urban. Suburban has the maximum
diversity because at an intermediate frequency of disturbance, colonization can occur;
but competitive displacement is held to a minimum.

Part III. Comparing Community Similarity

7. How similar do you think these communities are to one another? Before analyzing your data,
hypothesize if you would expect the urban-rural community would be more or less similar as
the urban-suburban community. Why? (1 point)
a. These communities are not similar to one another. I would hypothesize urban-rural
community would be less similar as compared to urban-suburban community. Urban-
rural community are less similar than urban-suburban because there is a huge human
disturbance in the urban areas than in rural. After calculating Sorensen’s coefficient, the
coefficient should be very low which would suggest and prove that urban-rural
community are less similar.

8. Calculate the Sorensen’s coefficient of community for the three communities: (3 points)
a. CC (Urban vs. Suburban): 0.75
Principles of Ecology (BIOL 330) Summer 2019 – Brodsky

b. CC (Urban vs. Rural): 0.22

c. CC (Suburban vs. Rural): 0.30

9. Can you accept your hypothesis? Why or why not? (1 point)

After calculating the Sorensen’s coefficient yes, I accept the hypothesis that urban-rural community is
less similar as the urban-suburban community. The coefficient should be between 0-1. If it’s closer to 1
it means they have lot of similarities but if the coefficient is closer to 0 it means that they are not
similar. The coefficient of urban-rural is just 0.22 and urban-suburban is 0.75, which means urban-rural
community are very less similar. The reason behind as hypothesized earlier might be the human
interference in the community of birds. Human activities in the urban and suburban are very high, for
example deforestation, buildings, noise, etc., as compared to rural which would be very low. These
factors can make rural community more diverse. So, this makes the two communities different.

Part IV. Landscape Dynamics

10. Let’s look at how these species are sorting themselves across the urbanization gradient.
a. Select one bird that is unique only to the urban habitat. Select one species that is unique
only to the rural habitat. (1 point)
i. Rock pigeon is unique to urban habitat and Carolina chickadee is unique to rural
habitat.

b. Describe the two species’ habitat requirements. A useful website for data on birds is
www.allaboutbirds.org. (1 point)
Rock pigeon: Mostly found in urban areas, farmland, and rocky cliffs. May
gather in large flocks in urban parks where people feed them.

Carolina Chickadee: They are found in deciduous and mixed deciduous-

coniferous woodlands, swamps, riparian areas, open woods and parks.

c. Classify each species as an edge, interior, or area-insensitive species (see textbook page
420) from the information you collect. Justify your answer. (1 point)
i. Carolina Chickadee are unique to rural and area-insensitive species because
they are adapted to the interior of old forest stands, which are characterized
by large trees and sparse shrub cover in the understory layer. The probability is
low that they will occur in small patches. This kind of group is intermediate of
edge and interior.
Rock Pigeon are unique to urban areas and interior species because they
require environmental conditions characteristic of interior habitats and stay
away from the abrupt changes associated with the boundary environment.