Evaluating biotic and abiotic drivers of avian community mobbing responses along urban gradients in Southern California

Urbanization is a significant pressure affecting wildlife, and has the potential to greatly alter behavioral responses in animal communities. A behavioral response that is potentially affected by urbanization is the mobbing of predators by potential avian prey species. We explored the effect of various abiotic and biotic factors in influencing avian mobbing responses along an urban-rural gradient. We conducted predator simulations by using playback of the vocalizations of the Western Screech-owl, Megascops kennicottii, which is a predatory species that elicits a mobbing response from other birds. These vocalizations, accompanied by stuffed models of the screech-owls, were broadcast at a variety of points along an urban-rural gradient in Los Angeles and Orange Counties in southern California. We used an experimental approach using playback, i.e., vocalization and models, to investigate whether mobbing responses of birds change in areas where predators may be naturally present (high veget..., , , # Evaluating biotic and abiotic drivers of avian community mobbing responses along urban gradients in Southern California

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sf7m0cgd7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sf7m0cgd7)

The following repository is associated with Ewing, Benjamin, Wood, Eric M. and Martinez, Ari. “*Evaluating biotic and abiotic drivers of avian community mobbing responses along urban gradients in Southern California.” *Ecosphere. In press. It contains a csv file containing the raw data that was collected during the mobbing trials conducted for my Master's thesis at CSULB, as well as a R document containing the code used to generate the models, predictions, and graphs for the manuscript. 

Data was collected during point counts at various sites throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California, United States. I recorded the all the birds seen or heard within 100m of the point for 10 minutes. This was followed by 5 minutes of playback of a vocalization, either of a predator (Weste...