Urban foxes are bolder but not more innovative than their rural conspecifics

Urbanization is the fastest form of landscape transformation on the planet, but researchers' understanding of the relationships between urbanization and animal behaviour is still in its infancy. In terms of foraging, bold and innovative behaviours are proposed to help urban animals access, utilize and exploit novel anthropogenic food sources. Red foxes, Vulpes vulpes, are one of the most widespread carnivores on the planet. However, despite frequent stories, images and videos portraying them as ‘pests’ in urban areas due to their exploitation of food-related objects (e.g. raiding the contents of outdoor bins), it is unknown whether they are bolder and more innovative in terms of their likelihood of exploiting these resources compared to rural populations. In the current study, we gave novel food-related objects to foxes from 104 locations (one object per location) across a large urban-rural gradient. To access the food, foxes had to use behaviours necessary for exploiting many food-related objects in the real world (e.g. biting, pushing, pulling or lifting human-made materials). Despite foxes from 96 locations acknowledging the objects, foxes from 31 locations touched them, while foxes from 12 locations gained access to the food inside. A principal component analysis of urban and other landscape variables (e.g. road, greenspace and human population density) revealed that urbanization was significantly and positively related to the likelihood of foxes touching, but not exploiting, the objects. Thus, while urban foxes may be bolder than rural populations in terms of their willingness to physically touch novel food-related objects, our findings are inconsistent with the notion that they are more innovative and pose a general nuisance to people by regularly exploiting these anthropogenic resources on a large geographical scale

A global meta-analysis reveals higher variation in breeding phenology in urban birds than in their non-urban neighbours

Cities pose a major ecological challenge for wildlife worldwide. Phenotypic variation, which can result from underlying genetic variation or plasticity, is an important metric to understand eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change. Recent work suggests that urban populations might have higher levels of phenotypic variation than non-urban counterparts. This prediction, however, has never been tested across species nor over a broad geographical range. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of the avian literature to compare urban versus non-urban means and variation in phenology (i.e. lay date) and reproductive effort (i.e. clutch size, number of fledglings). First, we show that urban populations reproduce earlier and have smaller broods than non-urban conspecifics. Second, we show that urban populations have higher phenotypic variation in laying date than non-urban populations. This result arises from differences between populations within breeding seasons, conceivably due to higher landscape heterogeneity in urban habitats. These findings reveal a novel effect of urbanisation on animal life histories with potential implications for species adaptation to urban environments (which will require further investigation). The higher variation in phenology in birds subjected to urban disturbance could result from plastic responses to a heterogeneous environment, or from higher genetic variation in phenology, possibly linked to higher evolutionary potential

Widespread extinction debts and colonization credits in United States breeding bird communities

Species extinctions and colonizations in response to land cover change often occur with time lags rather than instantaneously, leading to extinction debts and colonization credits. These debts and credits can lead to erroneous predictions of future biodiversity. Recent attempts to measure debts and credits have been limited to small geographical areas and have not considered multiple land cover types, or the directionality of land cover change. Here we quantify the relative contribution of past and current landscapes on the current effective number of species of 2,880 US bird communities, explicitly measuring the response of biodiversity to increases and decreases in five land cover types. We find that the current effective number of species is still largely explained by the past landscape composition (legacy effect), depending on the type, magnitude and directionality of recent land cover change. This legacy effect leads to widespread extinction debts and colonization credits. Specifically, we reveal debts across 52% of the United States, particularly in recently urbanized areas, and colonization credits in the remaining 48%, which are primarily associated with grassland decrease. We conclude that biodiversity policy targets risk becoming rapidly obsolete unless past landscapes are considered and debts and credits accounted for

A global meta‐analysis reveals higher variation in breeding phenology in urban birds than in their non‐urban neighbours

Cities pose a major ecological challenge for wildlife worldwide. Phenotypic variation, which can result from underlying genetic variation or plasticity, is an important metric to understand eco‐evolutionary responses to environmental change. Recent work suggests that urban populations might have higher levels of phenotypic variation than non‐urban counterparts. This prediction, however, has never been tested across species nor over a broad geographical range. Here, we conducted a meta‐analysis of the avian literature to compare urban versus non‐urban means and variation in phenology (i.e. lay date) and reproductive effort (i.e. clutch size, number of fledglings). First, we show that urban populations reproduce earlier and have smaller broods than non‐urban conspecifics. Second, we show that urban populations have higher phenotypic variation in laying date than non‐urban populations. This result arises from differences between populations within breeding seasons, conceivably due to higher landscape heterogeneity in urban habitats. These findings reveal a novel effect of urbanisation on animal life histories with potential implications for species adaptation to urban environments (which will require further investigation). The higher variation in phenology in birds subjected to urban disturbance could result from plastic responses to a heterogeneous environment, or from higher genetic variation in phenology, possibly linked to higher evolutionary potential

Combining rapid antigen testing and syndromic surveillance improves community-based COVID-19 detection in a low-income country.

Diagnostics for COVID-19 detection are limited in many settings. Syndromic surveillance is often the only means to identify cases but lacks specificity. Rapid antigen testing is inexpensive and easy-to-deploy but can lack sensitivity. We examine how combining these approaches can improve surveillance for guiding interventions in low-income communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Rapid-antigen-testing with PCR validation was performed on 1172 symptomatically-identified individuals in their homes. Statistical models were fitted to predict PCR-status using rapid-antigen-test results, syndromic data, and their combination. Under contrasting epidemiological scenarios, the models' predictive and classification performance was evaluated. Models combining rapid-antigen-testing and syndromic data yielded equal-to-better performance to rapid-antigen-test-only models across all scenarios with their best performance in the epidemic growth scenario. These results show that drawing on complementary strengths across rapid diagnostics, improves COVID-19 detection, and reduces false-positive and -negative diagnoses to match local requirements; improvements achievable without additional expense, or changes for patients or practitioners