Metacommunities are the set of local communities that are linked by the dispersion of potentially interacting species. The study of metacommunities is important to elucidate the relationship between processes that occur at different spatial scales. However, bird metacommunities in urban parks have been little studied. The objectives of this study were: 1) to analyze the relative role of species dispersal, environmental selection, and stochastic processes shaping urban bird metacommunities; and 2) to analyze the structure of the metacommunities of birds in urban parks. Bird surveys were made in 51 parks of six cities in Buenos Aires province, Argentina. To obtain the metacommunity structure, three elements were analyzed: coherence, turnover, and boundary clumping. We found that the metacommunity conforms to a clementsian structure, in which groups of species respond in a similar way to environmental gradients. The environmental and connectivity variables explained a greater proportion of the variance than the spatial variable. The composition of species was related to the location of the cities, the distance to the rural area, the distance to the urban center, the number of cars passing near parks, and habitat diversity. Due to the clementsian structure of metacommunities, they probably were structured under a species sorting and mass effect process. The number of cars and habitat diversity in the parks would be acting as environmental filters for bird species, while the distance to rural areas and the distance to the urban center would affect species dispersal to the parks. These findings emphasize the importance of maintaining and improving park connectivity and habitat diversity for bird species, managing them as cities grow.

中文翻译：

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阿根廷潘皮安地区城市公园的鸟类元群落


元群落是通过潜在相互作用物种的分散而联系在一起的局部群落的集合。对元社区的研究对于阐明在不同空间尺度上发生的过程之间的关系非常重要。然而，城市公园中的鸟类元群落研究较少。本研究的目标是：1） 分析物种扩散、环境选择和塑造城市鸟类元群落的随机过程的相对作用;2） 分析城市公园鸟类元群落的结构。在阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯省 6 个城市的 51 个公园进行了鸟类调查。为了获得元群落结构，分析了三个要素：相干性、周转率和边界聚集。我们发现元群落符合克莱门茨结构，其中物种群以类似的方式响应环境梯度。与空间变量相比，环境变量和连通性变量解释的方差比例更大。物种的组成与城市的位置、到农村地区的距离、到城市中心的距离、公园附近经过的汽车数量以及栖息地的多样性有关。由于元群落的 clementsian 结构，它们可能是在物种分类和质量效应过程中构建的。公园中的汽车数量和栖息地多样性将充当鸟类的环境过滤器，而到农村地区的距离和到城市中心的距离会影响物种向公园的扩散。这些发现强调了维护和改善公园连通性和鸟类栖息地多样性的重要性，并随着城市的发展对其进行管理。