City sicker? A meta‐analysis of wildlife health and urbanization

Abstract

Urban development can alter resource availability, land use, and community composition, which, in turn, influences wildlife health. Generalizable relationships between wildlife health and urbanization have yet to be quantified and could vary across different measures of health and among species. We present a phylogenetic meta‐analysis of 516 comparisons of the toxicant loads, parasitism, body condition, or stress of urban and non‐urban wildlife populations reported in 106 studies spanning 81 species in 30 countries. We found a small but significant negative relationship between urbanization and wildlife health, driven by considerably higher toxicant loads and greater parasite abundance, greater parasite diversity, and/or greater likelihood of infection by parasites transmitted through close contact. Invertebrates and amphibians were particularly affected, with urban populations having higher toxicant loads and greater physiological stress than their non‐urban counterparts. We also found strong geographic and taxonomic bias in research effort, highlighting future research needs. Our results suggest that some types of health risks are more pronounced for wildlife in urban areas, which could have important implications for conservation.