Urbanization is a process widely recognized for affecting the distribution and abundance of wildlife. Studies of urbanization effects on wildlife often treat environments as a qualitative, dichotomous state (e.g., urban v. rural) or rely on landcover classification based on human population density. Mechanistically, wildlife responses to urbanization will depend on changes to biophysical environment that accompany increased human density. The objectives of our study were to analyze changes in habitat attributes in relation to human population density within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SAMO) and use 5 years of capture data from intensive pitfall arrays to relate patterns of amphibian and reptile occupancy and abundance to principal components of urbanizing environments.
Results/Conclusions
Our results do not support the notion that herpetofaunal occupancy nor abundance are sensitive to a single anthropocentric urban attribute, such as population density, but that distribution patterns are more sensitive to a composite of urban indicators in addition to remnant or emerging habitat types.