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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 110(1)

What do museum specimens tell us about the impact of urbanisation? A comparison of the recent and historical bird communities of Sydney

Richard E. Major A C and Holly Parsons A B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Terrestrial Ecology, Australian Museum, 6 College St, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia.

B Present address: Birds in Backyards Program, Birds Australia, Bird Discovery Centre, 1 Jamieson St, Sydney Olympic Park, NSW 2127, Australia.

C Corresponding author. Email: richard.major@austmus.gov.au

Emu 110(1) 92-103 https://doi.org/10.1071/MU09058
Submitted: 26 June 2009  Accepted: 7 December 2009   Published: 24 February 2010

Abstract

Most research investigating the effect of urbanisation on animals infers temporal change by comparing the species composition of present urban habitats with that of nearby ‘natural’ sites. In regions with a long history of human habitation and large human populations, there are sometimes sizeable museum collections that provide direct evidence of the distribution of animals present before urbanisation. This study identifies changes in the bird community of Sydney associated with urbanisation, by comparing the pre-1900 bird community determined from the ornithological databases of the Australian Museum and Museum Victoria, with the bird community of 1998–99 determined from Birds Australia’s Atlas database. The major difference in the bird community between the two periods was a shift in body size, with large species comprising a greater proportion of the recent bird community than small birds. The source of this difference was a result of both a relative decline in the small species within bird groupings (e.g. small insectivores) and to a relative increase in groupings dominated by larger species (e.g. parrots and vertebrate feeders). These results are similar to those obtained from comparison of urban areas and nearby natural sites.

Additional keywords: body size, insectivore, Noisy Miner, parrot, suburban, urban.


Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Birds Australia, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and the Australian Museum, Sydney, for making their data available to us. We thank Greg Gowing, Walter Boles and Wayne Longmore for extracting data from museum collections and Andrew Silcocks for extracting data from the Birds Australia Atlas database. Thanks also to Michael Byrne, Kris French, John Martin, Jaynia Sladek and John White for their helpful suggestions on the draft manuscript.


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Appendix 1.  Bird species represented by more than one individual in the historical (1850–1900) and contemporary (1998–99) samples
Figures in parentheses are weights (g). The historical sample comes from the databases of the Australian Museum, Sydney, and Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and the contemporary sample from Birds Australia’s Atlas Database
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