Changes in the feeding ecology of an opportunistic predator inhabiting urban environments in response to COVID-19 lockdown
Vez-Garzón, Marc (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Giménez, Joan (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Sánchez-Márquez, Antoni (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Montalvo Porro, Tomas (Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica Sant Pau)
Navarro, Joan (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Data:	2023
Resum:	Urban-dwelling species present feeding and behavioural innovation that enable them to adjust to anthropogenic food subsidies available in cities. In 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak resulted in unprecedented reduction in the human activity worldwide associated with the human lockdown. This situation opened an excellent opportunity to investigate the capability of urban wildlife to cope with this anthropopause event. Here, we investigated the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the feeding strategies of the urban yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) population inhabiting the highly dense city of Barcelona (NE Spain). We compared the diet of chicks (through stomach content and stable isotope analyses) sampled randomly around the city of Barcelona before (2018 and 2019), during (2020) and after (2021) the COVID-19 lockdown. The results revealed that the anthropopause associated with the lockdown had an effect on the diet of this urban-dwelling predator. The diversity of prey consumed during the lockdown was lower, and consumption of urban birds (pigeons and parakeets) and marine prey (fishery discards and natural prey) decreased during the year of lockdown. Although it was not analysed, these diet changes probably were associated with variations in the availability of these resources due to the decrease in human activity during the lockdown. These results demonstrate the trophic flexibility of urban-dwelling species to cope with the changes in the availability of human-related anthropogenic resources in urban marine ecosystems.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	COVID-19 ; Anthropopause ; Feeding ecology ; Marine predator ; Urban ecology ; Urban wildlife
Publicat a:	Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 10 Núm. 4 (december 2023) , p. 221639, ISSN 2054-5703

DOI: 10.1098/rsos.221639
PMID: 37063991

12 p, 1.1 MB

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