A recent colonizer bird as indicator of human-induced landscape change: Eurasian collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto) in a small Mediterranean island

We studied the habitat preferences at three different landscape scales of Eurasian collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto), a bird which recently colonized the Western and Southern Europe, with the aim to corroborate their synanthropic ecology and to propose it as indicator of human-induced landscape change. We carried out this study in a small circum-Sardinian island (Italy) of high conservation concern. Comparing occurrence records with random sites, we observed that sites where this species occur showed significant lower averaged values of distance from nearest buildings, from the largest town, and from the nearest paved roads. Sites of occurrence showed significantly higher values of in urban cover density when compared with random sites where the species is absent: in particular, distance from nearest building being the main predictor using a logistic regression. Predictive models highlighted as a high proportion of the island (24–42%) shows a medium-high suitability for this species. Due to the analogous landscape anthropization of many Mediterranean islands, we suggest as this species could rapidly colonize a large part of them in the next decades. Moreover, this synanthropic species could meet many of the typical criteria requested for a biological indicator of human-induced landscape changes in land use policies.