When flying-foxes roost close to human inhabitants their large ‘camps’ can cause conflict in the community. They can be perceived to be extremely smelly and noisy by some, and as awe-inspiring pollinators by others. The complaints that this issue generates presents a substantial challenge to generally poorly-resourced local managers, and are a key trigger in managers’ decisions to undertake sometimes very costly interventions to address concerns. But there remains a poor understanding of what shapes resident’s attitudes to flying-foxes, and at a higher level, what factors may cause some camps to become particularly contentious. We distributed 8,000 geocoded surveys to residents living within 300m of 31 flying-fox camps across the east coast of Australia. The surveys asked residents about their observations and experiences of their local camp, their perceptions of the local council and acceptability of management scenarios, and also about their attitudes towards wildlife more generally. Whilst managers seemed to frequently hear only the most polarised views in the community, the surveys revealed that even within a short distance of contentious camps there was often a substantial contingent of people with moderate views. Those who were most negative about the bats rated higher on a number of ‘exposure’ factors, and were often triggered by unexpected events in the camp, such as large influxes. The models we generated through the surveys can help predict areas of potential future conflict, to inform proactive management approaches such as targeted education and outreach, or subsidies to minimise exposure factors.

Many Australian cities have ambitious targets to increase tree numbers and canopy cover, but they also remove many urban trees every year. This is because many large, old trees pose a hazard to human safety and hinder construction activities, and hence are often removed. However, the services that trees provide are more significant as trees age and increase in size. This means that places where trees are removed often experience rapid loss, absence, and slow recovery in tree canopy cover. While the negative effects of tree removal on environmental service provision, such as shade or carbon capture, are straight forward, there is no clear understanding of the combined ecological and social effects of tree removal. These effects could influence urban biodiversity, as well as human health and well-being. Such impacts can be measured at different ecological scales (i.e., landscape- or tree-level) and at different types of sites (i.e., parks, streets). We report on an experimental investigation that used innovative field methods (i.e., before-after-control-impact experimental design; herbivory surveys; and intercept social surveys) to measure the impact of tree removal on animals and people at selected park and street sites in the Cities of Melbourne, Ballarat, and Moreland, Australia. The study focused on the changes of avian and tree-hollow dependent fauna density, herbivory, attitudes towards trees, perceived benefits of trees, subjective well-being, and nature connectedness in people visiting the park. We present the design and methods behind our research, some initial results, and reflections on the usefulness and replicability of our methods.

Urbanisation is a global phenomenon that has led to a rapid increase in both the number of people living in cities and the proportion of land mass occupied by urban environments. Although the process of urbanisation destroys and fragments natural habitats, it also creates new ecological niches and provides access to abundant resources, allowing some species to thrive. Rodents are among the most successful urban mammals, with several species distributed globally in cities (e.g., members of the genera Mus and Rattus), and many others persisting locally in urban and suburban areas. However, urban rodents are also known reservoirs of many significant human diseases, including leptospirosis, Lyme disease, and viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers. Although human disease risk in cities is influenced by wildlife diversity, the nature of the relationships between the environment, wildlife community composition, and the type and intensity of human-animal contact remain poorly understood and difficult to manage. We use a combination of ecological and evolutionary approaches to study the abundance and distribution of rodents and their microbes across urban gradients to explore how the ecological and environmental context of cities influences urban zoonotic disease dynamics and human disease risk.

Insecticide use in urban areas has a detrimental impact on both public and environmental health. Overuse of chemical pest control products is common, with residents often applying pesticides even when there is no threat to health or property. The problem of excessive insecticide use is driven by attitudes and management practices, therefore it requires an approach that integrates the social and ecological sciences. To understand household pest control practices we conducted an online survey asking people about their attitudes towards insects, why they do/don’t use insecticides and which products they use. Our survey received 1878 responses, mostly from the Sydney area. We found that 83% of respondents use insecticides of one kind or another, the most popular of which were broad spectrum insect sprays and cockroach baits. Attitudes towards insects were more moderate than expected, with most people choosing to ignore or conserve insects (with the exception of mosquitoes and termites), especially in their gardens. Promisingly, of those who use sprays, the majority (68%) of people prefer to use a small amount over a restricted area, rather than small or large amounts over a large area. Understanding these factors and the attitudes that drive unnecessary use will help us design strategies to reduce urban insecticide use and the associated impacts. We are using the survey data to develop targeted community education materials and provide guidance to local governments to help reduce insecticide use.

It is thought that green environments have positive effects on people's emotional state. However most existing studies have focussed on the relationship between land use (e.g. parks vs urban) or land cover (e.g. greeness as measured by NDVI) alone. Here we explore the interactive effects of land use and land cover on people's emotional state as expressed in twitter. We used sentiment analysis to determine the emotional state expressed in millions of geolocated tweets and combined these with spatial datasets of land use (ABS meshblocks) and greenness (NDVI). Results showed that greenness was associated with more positive tweets in some land uses but not others, when controlling for area-level income and population density. Specifically, greener parks, medical, and transport land uses were associated with more positive sentiment, while greener residential areas were associated with more negative sentiment. This suggests that while 'green is good' in some contexts, this is not true in all contexts. More nuanced understandings of urban ecosystems are needed to better understand the complex relationship betwen human emotions and the environment.

Urban green spaces (UGS) are not only critical for plant and animal conservation, but for human health as well. They provide space to exercise, socialise and relax, and have been linked to psychological restoration, decreased psychological stress, and many other health benefits. They also provide ecosystem services such as: mitigating air pollution and temperatures, thus creating more liveable cities. But, UGS need to be of good quality to provide the greatest benefits. However, a systematic literature review revealed that there is a positive association between wealth and the quality of urban forests (a particular type of green space), which is an environmental justice issue. There was also no consensus among the literature on how to measure forest quality. Therefore, we conducted a study where we assessed the quality of 16 UGS through biodiversity assessments and an objective “natural environment scoring tool” in Hobart, Tasmania. We examined the relationship between UGS quality and socioeconomic status of the surrounding area. We also examined how objectively-measured quality relates to perceived quality and visitor behaviour. This study will reveal whether UGS quality is an environmental justice issue in Hobart. Furthermore, by examining the relationship between perceived quality, visitor behaviour and features of UGS, we will gain an understanding of what makes these spaces attractive to visitors and therefore effective in conveying public health benefits. These insights could improve the design and distribution of UGS in Hobart, Tasmania so they are effective at supporting a healthy urban population and environment.

An often-forgotten component of urban ecology is the urban aerial ecology – the diverse and dynamic mixture of pollen, fungal spores and bacteria floating in the air. Yet this aerial ecology has deep implications for human health: particularly, though not only, with respect to allergies, asthma and the immune system. The aerial ecology is also, like any other urban ecology, profoundly impacted by human activities and how we choose to construct our urban environments. Understanding these interactions will be critical to developing healthy urban socio-ecological systems.
This paper will explore the potential for emerging methodologies to characterise urban aerial ecologies in unprecedented breadth and depth. Until recently, characterising urban aerial ecologies was extremely challenging due to the limitations of microscope and culture-based techniques. Now, new methods based primarily on metagenomics are offering researchers a far more holistic perspective on the urban aerial ecologies that surround us. The paper will explore the strengths and limitations of these new methods, and describe their recent applications in a study of the urban aerial ecology of Hobart.

Artificial light at night is an anthropogenic pollutant that disrupts biological processes and can generate dramatic shifts in ecological interactions, including trophic relationships in plant-animal communities. Here, we used a keystone tree species (the river red gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis) and a common herbivore (the red gum lerp psyllid —Glycaspis brimblecombei) to investigate the effects of ecologically-relevant night lighting on a common woodland food chain. Psyllid nymphs and their lerps (protective structures built of crystallised sugar-rich secretions) are an important food resource for many woodland birds, including honeyeaters, parrots and pardalotes. We conducted a semi-natural field experiment that varied the presence of light at night to explore simultaneously its effects on plant growth and leaf nutrient content, as well as survival, development and lerp productivity in psyllid nymphs. Light at night reduced overall tree biomass, and altered allometry, but did not impact photosynthetic activity or transpiration. We present data on psyllid survival and lerp production, and discuss the potential impacts of light at night on the capacity of urban woodlands to support psyllid-dependant bird populations.

It is widely believed that urban residents have fewer and poorer experiences of nature because of a decline in opportunities to directly experience nature daily. In 1978, Robert Pyle conceptualised this phenomenon as the “Extinction of Experience”, and proposed a positive feedback loop in which a decline in experiences of nature resulted in reduced emotional affinity for nature, decrease motivation to experience nature, and ultimately create a human-nature emotional disconnect. We conducted a study to assess whether the process of the extinction of experience has occurred in cities. We use an example from Singapore, a very highly-urbanised and densely-populated tropical country, to investigate whether direct experiences of nature, opportunities to experience nature, and human-nature connections have changed across time. Using household surveys, we measured experiences of nature (i.e. the frequency and duration of visits to urban greenspace; the types of nature observed in greenspace) and people’s connection to nature. As a proxy for opportunities to experience nature, we also conducted bird surveys to quantify bird species richness and abundance. To then assess change over time, we compared this dataset collected in 2018 with the data that was collected in 1996 using the same set of methods. Our results suggest that there exist no notable extinction of experience: individuals’ direct experiences of nature remained unchanged despite a slight decline in urban greenspace use. Individuals further demonstrated stronger connections to, and values of, nature. We also show that opportunities for nature experiences has increased in abundance and remain unchanged in diversity.