Urban ecology articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Twice a year, billions of nocturnal avian migrants traverse landscapes that are changing through natural and anthropogenic forces. Here, the authors identify light pollution as an influential predictor of bird migration stopover density across the USA.

    • Kyle G. Horton
    • , Jeffrey J. Buler
    •  & Geoffrey M. Henebry

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cities may host surprisingly diverse and functionally distinct biological communities. This global analysis on 5302 vertebrate and invertebrate species finds evidence of 4 trait syndromes in urban animal assemblages, modulated by spatial and geographic factors.

    • Amy K. Hahs
    • , Bertrand Fournier
    •  & Marco Moretti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While reflective pavement has been proposed and applied in pilot projects, its actual cooling performance remains unclear. Here, authors assessed the cooling potential of reflective pavement in Phoenix, AZ, using multiple heat metrics, reflectivity measures, and literature to provide a set of implementation guidelines.

    • Florian A. Schneider
    • , Johny Cordova Ortiz
    •  & Ariane Middel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil viral communities remain understudied. Here, Liao et al. retrieve a catalogue of around sixty thousand vOTUs through a systematic viromic pipeline, and uncover the response of soil viral communities to anthropogenic land use changes.

    • Hu Liao
    • , Hu Li
    •  & Jian-Qiang Su

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study finds that city growth in the U.S. is spatially heterogeneous. Inter-city flows concentrate in core areas. Intra-city flows are generally directed towards external and low density counties of cities, and is the main contributor to urban sprawl.

    • Sandro M. Reia
    • , P. Suresh C. Rao
    •  & Satish V. Ukkusuri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An experimental study finds that birds and bats avoid whitewater river noise, and that intense noise reduces bird foraging activity and causes bats to switch hunting strategies. Overlap between noise and song frequency predicts bird declines until high levels where other mechanisms appear important.

    • D. G. E. Gomes
    • , C. A. Toth
    •  & J. R. Barber

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    As investment in urban conservation grows, researchers must balance the needs of residents and conservation targets. We discuss some of the challenges we have encountered and the importance of taking a transdisciplinary approach informed by design and social knowledge.

    • Katherine J. Turo
    •  & Mary M. Gardiner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Roads are widespread and can impact ecological communities. Cooke et al. use data for 75 bird species across Great Britain to show that common species are disproportionately abundant near roads, whereas rarer, smaller-bodied and migrant species are more likely to be negatively associated with roads.

    • Sophia C. Cooke
    • , Andrew Balmford
    •  & Alison Johnston

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There lacks research to figure out the variations in sources, magnitude, and spatiotemporal patterns of Nr flows in urban system. Here the authors develop a coupled human-natural urban nitrogen flow analysis model and show that anthropogenic perturbations not only intensify Nr input to sustain increasing demands for production and consumption of cities, but also greatly change the Nr distribution pattern in the urban system.

    • Yue Dong
    • , Linyu Xu
    •  & Lei Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pollinators can persist in urban areas despite little natural habitat. Here the authors compare insect pollinators and pollination inside and outside of German cities, showing that urban areas have high diversity of bees but not other insects, and high pollination provisioning, relative to rural sites.

    • Panagiotis Theodorou
    • , Rita Radzevičiūtė
    •  & Robert J. Paxton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Disease transmission is particularly complex at the human-livestock-wildlife interface. Here the authors sample E. coli from wild birds near households in Nairobi and show that antimicrobial resistance gene diversity is correlated with human and lifestock density, while virulence gene diversity is correlated with avian species richness.

    • J. M. Hassell
    • , M. J. Ward
    •  & E. M. Fèvre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Garden bird feeding is a prolific human activity that provides a reliable foraging opportunity to wild birds. Here the authors use a 40-year data set to show that large-scale restructuring of garden bird communities and growth in urban bird populations can be linked to changing feeding practices.

    • Kate E. Plummer
    • , Kate Risely
    •  & Gavin M. Siriwardena

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The gut microbiomes of urban-industrialized societies differ from those of traditional rural societies and hunter-gatherers. Here the authors perform a comparative analysis of available and new gut microbiome data to provide fresh insight into these differences.

    • Alexandra J. Obregon-Tito
    • , Raul Y. Tito
    •  & Cecil M. Lewis

  • Article |

    Primary and secondary organic aerosols emitted by road vehicles are hazardous to health and climate, with diesel trucks and cars considered the main offenders. Platt et al.show that, despite constituting a small fraction of the fleet, two-stroke scooters can dominate vehicular pollution in some cities.

    • S.M. Platt
    • , I.El. Haddad
    •  & A.S.H. Prévôt

Browse broader subjects

Browse Urban ecology across other nature.com journals