Community heterogeneity of aquatic macroinvertebrates in urban ponds at a multi-city scale

Abstract

Purpose Urbanisation is a leading cause of biotic homogenisation in urban ecosystems. However, there has been little research examining the effect of urbanisation and biotic homogenisation on aquatic communities, and few studies have compared findings across different urban landscapes. We assessed the processes that structure aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity within five UK cities and characterise the heterogeneity of pond macroinvertebrate communities within and among urban areas. Methods A total of 132 ponds were sampled for invertebrates to characterise biological communities of ponds across five UK cities. Variation among sites within cities, and variation among urban settlements, was partitioned into components of beta diversity relating to turnover and nestedness.Results We recorded 337 macroinvertebrate taxa, and species turnover almost entirely accounted for the high beta-diversity recorded within each urban area and when all ponds were considered. A total of 40% of all macroinvertebrates recorded were unique to a particular urban settlement. In contrast to the homogenisation of terrestrial and lotic communities in urban landscapes reported in the literature, ponds support highly heterogeneous communities within and among urban settlements. Conclusions The high species turnover (species replacement) recorded in this study demonstrates that urban pond biodiversity conservation would be most 123Landscape Ecol (2018) 33:389-405 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0608-1 efficient at a landscape-scale, rather than at the individual ponds scale. Pond conservation practices need to consider the spatial organization of ecological communities (landscape-scale) to ensure that the maximum possible biodiversity can be protected.

Environmental factors are primary determinants of different facets of pond macroinvertebrate alpha and beta diversity in a human-modified landscape

“…First, it would be advisable for management activities to focus on improving or restoring local environmental conditions to support locally diverse pond faunas at a landscape-scale through increased environmental heterogeneity. For example, major foci should be pond surface area, depth, macrophyte cover and variation in hydroperiod length (Biggs et al, 2005;Hassall et al, 2011;Florencio et al, 2014;Thornhill et al, 2018). This is important because taxonomic and functional alpha diversity were primarily determined by local environmental conditions.…”

“…Understanding the spatial patterns and environmental drivers of diversity and community assembly are central to the fields of community ecology, biogeography and conservation biology (Richardson Whittaker, 2010;Socolar et al, 2016;Soininen, 2016). Examining spatial biodiversity patterns has typically been based on taxonomic richness (Ricklefs, 2004;Hill et al, 2018). However, focussing primarily on the taxonomic facet fails to acknowledge that biotic assemblages are composed of taxa with different evolutionary histories and functional roles within ecosystems (Cardoso et al, 2014), which may not provide a complete or comprehensive understanding of the community assembly (Heino and Tolonen, 2017a).…”

“…For example, sites with high taxonomic richness may be characterized by low functional diversity, as different taxa among sites may possess similar functional roles (Villeger et al, 2012); while other studies have shown taxonomic richness to be correlated to phylogenetic and functional diversity (Heino and Tolonen 2017a). Incorporating functional and phylogenetic approaches into biodiversity research may provide a greater understanding of ecosystem functioning-environment associations (Dray et al, 2014), variation in community productivity (Cadotte et al, 2009), the resilience of ecosystem functioning (Thornhill et al, 2018), and the evolutionary constraints on patterns in community composition (Webb et al, 2002).…”

Estimating aquatic invertebrate diversity in the southern Alps using data from Biodiversity Days

“…Based on the existing data from past Biodiversity Days and on the increase of known taxa in that region, we conclude that Biodiversity Days will continue contributing to the discovery of aquatic taxa in the next decades. Predicting the entire taxa inventory of this region is avoided and should in any case be considered with caution, since a) the surveys focused on the most species-rich animal groups, leading to increased numbers of new taxa over time, and b) only natural habitats have been examined so far, neglecting less known water types such as urban waters, morphologically modified streams, reservoirs, ponds, eutrophic drainage ditches, etc., with their diverse communities (e.g., in urban ponds; Hill et al, 2018). Given that Alpine waters with distinct environmental conditions harbor different communities (Niedrist and Füreder, 2016), we expect that monitoring such non-natural habitats will reveal taxa that are not present in natural waters.…”

A study on diversity of mammalian species using camera traps and associated vegetation in Mizoram University Campus, Aizawl, Mizoram

“…Such anthropogenic activities have created a mosaic of remnant forest patches of varying size, demarcated by a network of roads, concerts, and settlements areas (Mazumdar et al 2011). Recent researches on biodiversity conservation had put urban areas having rich biodiversity into the limelight for the long-term persistence of native species (Ordenana et al 2010;Lopucki & Kitowski 2017;Hill et al 2018). Urbanization is often considered to have several negative impacts on the native flora and fauna; nevertheless, it also serves as valuable habitat and corridor for dispersal of certain animal species (Opdam et al 2003;Fernandez & Simonetti 2013).…”