The human-associated behavioral modification in urban squirrels: multiple behavioral comparisons in urban and rural habitats
Kenta Uchida (Graduate School of Environmnetal Science, Hokkaido University/ JSPS Research Fellow DC2)
Recent rapid extensions of urban areas, termed “urbanization”, has been imposing novel challenges to animals, which causes global scale biodiversity loss. At the same time, some species manage to adjust to urban environments. Such species modify behaviors to cope with anthropogenic disturbances, for example by increasing nocturnality, becoming bold and explorative. Because behavioral modification is a fundamental response of animals to environmental changes, assessing behavioral differences between urban and non-urban habitats enables us to predict behavioral adjustment towards urbanization. In this seminar, I’m going to introduce my studies using Eurasian red squirrel in Hokkaido. In particular, I compared various behavioral traits of squirrel between urban and rural habitats. I also investigated how urban squirrels respond to human presence. I found that squirrels are not necessarily modifying their fundamental behavioral traits; rather, human-related behavioral changes would be a key role in adjustment to urbanization. The result underscored the importance of considering the direct effect of human on animals and deepened knowledge for the process of behavioral modification towards urbanization.