Publications by authors named "Isaac J VanDiest"
Article Synopsis
- The way people use land, especially in cities, is making some animals, like bugs and songbirds, disappear.
- Urban areas have fewer bugs than rural places, which could affect birds that rely on them for food, like song sparrows.
- Even though there are fewer bugs in cities, song sparrow nestlings (baby birds) are still getting enough food to eat from what’s available.
Urban habitats present animals with persistent disturbances and acute stressors not present in rural habitats or present at significantly lower levels. Differences in the glucocorticoid stress response could underlie colonization of these novel habitats. Despite urban habitats characterization as more stressful, previous comparisons of urban and rural birds have failed to find consistent differences in baseline and stress induced glucocorticoid levels.
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