Adaptations of the hooded crow (Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758) to urban environment

The crow birds are an inalienable component of anthropogenic ecosystems and the most successful species is the hooded crow. The success of a species depends on the conformity of a speed of adaptation process to the change rate in the environment. Organisms, adapting to the new environmental parameters in the city, demonstrate adaptive mechanisms, and can be a model for studying the evolutionary process. The process of urbanization of the hooded crow continues at present in many parts of its range, but the causes and mechanisms of these processes are not fully understood. The tasks of our research included finding out the directions and rates of the hooded crow adaptations to the changing urban environment. The research was conducted in 1997–2018. In Cherepovets, the hooded crow began to adapt to the urban environment in the late 1950s. The fastest rate of adaptations of the species was observed in the last decade. The main adaptive processes of the hooded crow in the urban system were the following: 1) territorial changes – occur at different rates, following changes in the urban development of residential buildings and in the age composition of trees, as well as changes in the culture of household waste collection service; 2) changes in the habitats of the hooded crow – are the increase in the tree species used for nesting and changes in the height of the nests, and occur during the last 15 years; 3) changes in seasonal life – in Cherepovets, hooded crows begin breeding 2 weeks earlier than in the vicinity; 4) changes in trophic links – increasing the proportion of anthropogenic feed in the diet of hooded crows as Cherepovets develops; 5) ethological changes – hooded crows became less careful at the end of the 1990s and have learned the skills of extracting food from different packages, cleaning contaminated food and dry food maceration.