Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Springer Science and Business Media LLC  

<title>Abstract</title>Preserving biodiversity in urban ecosystems has become an urgent conservation priority, given the rapid upsurge in global urbanization. As woody plants play essential ecological roles and provide psychological benefits to human city dwellers, their preservation is of particular interest to conservation scientists. However, considering that extensive censuses of woody plants are resource-intensive, a key accomplishment is to find reliable conservation proxies that can be quickly used to locate biologically diverse areas. Here, we test the idea that sites occupied by apex predators can indicate high overall biodiversity, including high diversity of woody plants. To this end, we surveyed woody plant species within 500 m of Northern Goshawk (<italic>Accipiter gentilis</italic>) breeding sites in urban ecosystems of Japan and compared them with non-breeding control sites without goshawks. We found that goshawks successfully identified and signposted high levels of richness, abundance, and diversity of woody plants. Our findings show that sites occupied by top predatory species could be exploited as conservation proxies for high plant diversity. Due to their exigent ecological requirements, we would expect apex predators to be tied to high biodiversity levels in many other urban ecosystems worldwide.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-021-00556-4

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Other Link： https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00556-4

Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Elsevier {BV}  

DOI： 10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127066

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106874

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.3356/0892-1016-54.3.311

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.1016/j.ufug.2020.126732

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：RAPTOR RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC  

Urbanization has increased with human population growth and the responses from raptor species are gaining more attention from both researchers and the public. Northern Goshawks (Accipiter gentilis) now breed in urban areas in Japan and Europe; however, there are few studies examining the factors that influence their reproductive rate in urban areas. We investigated the reproductive rate (number of fledglings per nest) of the Northern Goshawk population in an urbanized area of Japan from 2014 to 2016, and used a binomial mixture model to examine the relationship between the number of fledglings per nest and environmental factors such as nesting and foraging environments, anthropogenic disturbance, predation risk, and intraspecific competition. The goshawk nesting success rate from 2014 to 2016 was 71.6%, with an average reproductive rate of 1.7 fledglings per occupied nest. The percentage of canopy cover of nesting stands had a significant positive effect on fledgling numbers, and the number of adjacent occupied nests had a significant negative effect on fledgling numbers. The positive effects of canopy coverage may be explained by the protection offered by canopy against direct sunlight, wind, and rain. The negative effect of the adjacent occupied nests may result from an increase in the amount of time and energy goshawks spent in territory defense, and a decrease in available foraging habitat due to intraspecific competition.

DOI： 10.3356/0892-1016-53.4.377

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Authorship：Lead author,　Corresponding author   Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.3356/jrr-16-69.1

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