Gulls Swap Natural for Urban Habitats, Machine-Learning Study Finds
taylorvich writes:
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-gulls-swap-natural-urban-habitats.html
A recent study published in Ecological Informatics by a team of University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has used artificial intelligence to further illuminate a habitat swap among short-billed gulls.
Typically gulls live along coastlines and near water sources such as rivers. They feed on bugs and other small mammals, fish or birds.
The team found that from May to August, short-billed gulls occupied areas that have typically been the haunts of scavenging ravens. Those include supermarket and fast-food restaurant parking lots and other human-made structures, such as industrial gravel pads and garbage dumpsters.
The study is the first of its kind to compile a three-year dataset using a citizen science-based, opportunistic research method to include a large sample of gulls and other sub-Arctic birds in urban Alaska. The study provides a current snapshot of the habitat shift to an urban landscape.
UAF professor Falk Huettmann, first author on the paper, and his team used artificial intelligence modeling that was given predictors-environmental variables for specific locations-to extrapolate information about the gull occurrences. A similar, earlier study analyzed the distribution of the great gray owl.
In this study, researchers used U.S. census data as well as urban municipality data, such as distances to roads, restaurants, waterways and waste transfer stations.
"Using socioeconomic datasets like the U.S. census is a real game-changer," said Moriz Steiner, a graduate student in Huettmann's lab. "It allows us to mirror the real-world environment and simulate a situation as true to nature as possible by including them as variables in the models."
The findings indicate that the gulls' transition from natural habitats to a more urban landscape is spurred by the availability of human food, as well as industrial changes.
"They are exploiting the waste opportunity left behind by humans," said Huettmann, who is associated with UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology.
More information: Falk Huettmann et al, Model-based prediction of a vacant summer niche in a subarctic urbanscape: A multi-year open access data analysis of a 'niche swap' by short-billed Gulls, Ecological Informatics (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2023.102364
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