Crowding in the city: losing and winning competitors of an invasive bird

PLoS One. 2014 Jun 19;9(6):e100593. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100593. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Invasive species can take advantage of resources unexploited by natives (opportunism hypothesis) or they can exploit the same resources but more aggressively or efficiently (competition hypothesis), thus impacting native species. However, invasive species tend to exploit anthropogenic habitats that are inefficiently used by natives such as urban environments. Focusing on the ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri), one of the most invasive birds worldwide, we combined observations of interspecific aggressions, species-specific cavity-nest preferences and the spatial distribution of the native cavity-nesting vertebrate community to determine the invasion process as well as its potential impacts on native species in a Mediterranean city. Our results support the competition hypothesis, suggesting that ring-necked parakeets are outcompeting native species sharing nest-site preferences. Parakeets initiated and won most interspecific aggressions, which were directed towards competitors but also towards predators. This behaviour could explain the spatial arrangement of natives, with most bird species breeding close to parakeets possibly to take advantage of their effective antipredatory behaviour. However, temporal and spatial patterns of segregation suggest that a threatened bat species is negatively affected by parakeets. This demonstrates that common species gain benefits and threatened ones (in this study, a bat and possibly a falcon) lose nest sites due to invaders. Therefore, the conservation status of the native species that pay the costs of competition with invaders should be considered. This scenario of winners and losers may, however, shift towards more losers if the ring-necked parakeet population continues to grow, thus requiring close monitoring and control/eradication programs to avoid further impacts.

MeSH terms

  • Aggression
  • Animals
  • Breeding
  • Cities*
  • Competitive Behavior / physiology*
  • Crowding*
  • Introduced Species*
  • Linear Models
  • Parakeets / physiology*
  • Seasons
  • Species Specificity
  • Time Factors
  • Trees

Grants and funding

MC (RYC-2009-04860) and JLT were supported by Fundación Repsol and Project of Excellence from the Junta de Andalucía P08-RNM-4014. The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) action ParrotNet and the project EBD-Severo Ochoa (SEV-2012-0262) for the realization of this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.