Cities support abundant human and wildlife populations that are shaped indirectly and directly by human decisions, often resulting in unequal access to environmental services and accessible open spaces. Urban land cover drives biodiversity patterns across metropolitan areas, but at smaller scales that matter to local residents, neighborhood socio‐cultural factors can influence the presence and abundance of wildlife. Neighborhood income is associated with plant and animal diversity in some cities, but the influence of other social variables is less well understood, especially across desert ecosystems. We explored wildlife distribution across gradients of neighborhood ethnicity in addition to income and landscape characteristics within residential areas of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Utilizing data from 38 wildlife cameras deployed in public parks and undeveloped open spaces within or near suburban neighborhoods, we estimated occupancy and activity patterns of common mammal species, including species native to the Sonoran Desert (coyote [
This content will become publicly available on April 10, 2025
Recent advances in quantitative tools for examining urban morphology enable the development of morphometrics that can characterize the size, shape, and placement of buildings; the relationships between them; and their association with broader patterns of development. Although these methods have the potential to provide substantial insight into the ways in which neighborhood morphology shapes the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of neighborhoods and communities, this question is largely unexplored. Using building footprints in five of the ten largest U.S. metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles) and the open-source R package,
- Award ID(s):
- 2048562
- PAR ID:
- 10510850
- Editor(s):
- Xu, Gang
- Publisher / Repository:
- Public Library of Science
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLOS ONE
- Volume:
- 19
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1932-6203
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e0299713
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Neighborhood ethnicity is related to mammal occupancy and activity across a desert metropolitan areamore » « less
Abstract Canis latrans ] and desert cottontail rabbit [Sylvilagus audubonii ]), and non‐native domestic cat (Felis catus ). Neighborhood ethnicity (percentage of Latino residents) appeared to exhibit a negative relationship with occupancy for coyotes and cottontail rabbits. Additionally, daily activity patterns of coyotes occurred later in the evenings and mornings in neighborhoods with higher proportions of Latino residents, but activity was unaffected by differences in neighborhood income. This study is one of the first to show that social‐ecological mechanisms associated with patterns of neighborhood ethnicity as well as income may help to shape wildlife distribution in cities. These findings have implications for equitable management and provisioning of ecosystem services for urban residents and highlight the importance of considering a range of social covariates to better understand biodiversity outcomes in urban and urbanizing areas. -
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