Patterns in tree squirrel co-occurrence vary with responses to local land cover in US cities

Urbanization has important effects on the distribution and persistence of wildlife communities. Urbanization may alter not just the distributions of individual species, but also co-occurrence patterns and thus the potential for interspecific interactions (e.g., competition, predation) that structure wildlife communities. Little is currently known about how urbanization alters species co-occurrence or how these changes shape urban species assemblages. Using tree squirrels as a model functional group, we quantified how urbanization alters species occurrence and co-occurrence patterns to shape species assemblages, and how these effects vary within and among cities. We constructed a multi-species, multi-season occupancy model to identify relationships between tree squirrel occupancy and co-occurrence and local land and tree canopy cover and examined variation in these relationships within and among nine US cities. Species’ responses to canopy cover were highly variable among, but less variable within cities, suggesting that even common urban wildlife species may respond differently to urban intensity in different landscape contexts. Species co-occurrence was also highly variable among cities and weakly related to canopy cover within a city. These findings provide important evidence that both environmental attributes and species interactions shape urban wildlife communities. Important for management and conservation, they suggest that tree-canopy cover can particularly support forest species co-occurrence and that managing urban forests to provide high canopy cover could contribute to the diversity of urban wildlife communities in forested ecoregions.