Direct and indirect effects of urban gardening on aboveground and belowground diversity influencing soil multifunctionality

Tresch, Simon; Frey, David; Bayon, Renée‐Claire Le; Mäder, Paul; Stehle, Bernhard; Fließbach, Andreas; Moretti, Marco

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-46024-y

Cited by 42 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 80 publications

(125 reference statements)

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“…At this scale, the majority of the moth assemblage was positively associated with increasing percentage cover of unkempt shrub, and all but one of the remaining species responded to decreasing percentage cover of built land. The argument for 'wildlife-friendly' gardening is both persuasive and pervasive, yet empirical studies that directly address the ecological benefits of increased habitat structure within and around a domestic garden are scarce (Cabral et al 2017;Gaston et al 2005;Tresch et al 2019) The data presented here suggest that moth assemblages are not influenced by either garden size or habitat quality within individual urban domestic gardens. The issue is one of scale, and the evidence is threefold.…”

Section: Assemblage Response To Habitat and Vegetationmentioning

confidence: 76%

Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary

Ellis

Wilkinson

2020

Urban Ecosyst

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Wildlife-friendly' gardening is a dominant theme in the media that readily engages public attention. However, there is little empirical evidence of the ecological benefits of increased habitat quality of individual domestic gardens. This study uses lighttrapping to examine the response of moth assemblages to domestic gardens that are assessed in terms of their habitat complexity (simple and complex) both within the garden and extending out to a 30 m radius that includes surrounding habitats. The results clearly show that moth assemblages were influenced by complex habitats (particularly increasing levels of the variable shrubs and decreasing levels of artificial surfaces), but only at a scale that extended beyond the garden boundary to include the surrounding area. In other words, neither the complexity of the habitat within the garden or the size of the garden had any influence on the abundance or diversity of the moth assemblage. These results have implications for both garden management and landscape planningif domestic gardens are to be a useful component of strategies to reduce biodiversity loss within the urban environment then they should provide good habitat quality and be managed as a network of interconnected patches rather than as individual units.

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Section: Assemblage Response To Habitat and Vegetationmentioning

confidence: 76%

Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary

Ellis

Wilkinson

2020

Urban Ecosyst

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“…Future experimental work on this topic is needed to clarify to what extent these associations reflect host shifting patterns unique to urban environments and to fully understand the opportunities and risks provided by novel urban resources. On a wider level, research is also needed to determine to what extent the increases in insect biodiversity provided by complementing lawns and trees with a diverse palette of midstorey growth forms, particularly indigenous species, can boost ecosystem multifunctionality in urban greenspaces, as recently demonstrated for meso‐ and macrofauna influencing soil multifunctionality (Tresch et al 2019). The prospect of being able to understand the mechanistic links between, and to quantify the contributions of, increased biodiversity due to greenspace management actions and greenspace multifunctionality serves as a continuous incentive to future research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indigenous plants promote insect biodiversity in urban greenspaces

Mata

Andersen

Morán‐Ordóñez

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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The contribution of urban greenspaces to support biodiversity and provide benefits for people is increasingly recognized. However, ongoing management practices favor vegetation oversimplification, often limiting greenspaces to lawns and tree canopy rather than multi-layered vegetation that includes under-and midstorey, and the use of nonnative species. These practices hinder the potential of greenspaces to sustain indigenous biodiversity, particularly for taxa like insects that rely on plants for food and habitat. Yet, little is known about which plant species may maximize positive outcomes for taxonomically and functionally diverse insect communities in greenspaces. Additionally, while cities are expected to experience high rates of introductions, quantitative assessments of the relative occupancy of indigenous vs. introduced insect species in greenspace are rare, hindering understanding of how management may promote indigenous biodiversity while limiting the establishment of introduced insects. Using a hierarchically replicated study design across 15 public parks, we recorded occurrence data from 552 insect species on 133 plant species, differing in planting design element (lawn, midstorey, and tree canopy), midstorey growth form (forbs, lilioids, graminoids, and shrubs) and origin (nonnative, native, and indigenous), to assess (1) the relative contributions of indigenous and introduced insect species and (2) which plant species sustained the highest number of indigenous insects. We found that the insect community was overwhelmingly composed of indigenous rather than introduced species. Our findings further highlight the core role of multi-layered vegetation in sustaining high insect biodiversity in urban areas, with indigenous midstorey and canopy representing key elements to maintain rich and functionally diverse indigenous insect communities. Intriguingly, graminoids supported the highest indigenous insect richness across all studied growth forms by plant origin groups. Our work highlights the opportunity presented by indigenous understory and midstorey plants, particularly indigenous graminoids, in our study area to promote indigenous insect biodiversity in urban greenspaces. Our study provides a blueprint and stimulus for architects, engineers, developers, designers, and planners to incorporate into their practice plant species palettes that foster a larger presence of indigenous over regionally native or nonnative plant species, while incorporating a broader mixture of midstorey growth forms.

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“…Urban and peri-urban ecosystems are characterized by spatio-temporal changes in land use, with previous studies reporting potentially adverse effects of urbanisation on soil ecosystems 8 . The increased variability in the physico-chemical properties of urban and peri-urban soils, including agricultural and forest lands, is mainly attributed to soil compaction 9 , irrigation and nutrient inputs 10 – 12 , heavy metals accumulation 13 , the deposition of oxides and other organic compounds from increased road traffic 14 , 15 , and the presence of different plant species 16 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land use in urban areas impacts the composition of soil bacterial communities involved in nitrogen cycling. A case study from Lefkosia (Nicosia) Cyprus

Stephanou¹,

Omirou²,

Philippot³

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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The different types of land-use and soil lithology in urban and peri-urban areas of modern cities compose a complex mosaic of soil ecosystems. It is largely unknown how these differences result in changes in bacterial community composition and structure as well as in functional guilds involved in N cycling. To investigate the bacterial composition and the proportion of denitrifiers in agricultural, forested, schoolyard and industrial areas, 24 samples were collected from urban and peri-urban sites of Lefkosia. Bacterial diversity and the proportion of denitrifiers were assessed by NGS and qPCR, respectively. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria and Planctomycetes were identified as the most dominant phyla across all sites, while agricultural sites exhibited the highest bacterial diversity. Heavy metals such as Co, Pb, V and Al were identified as key factors shaping bacterial composition in industrial and schoolyard sites, while the bacterial assemblages in agricultural and forested sites were associated with Ca. Variance partitioning analysis showed that 10.2% of the bacterial community variation was explained by land use management, 5.1% by chemical elements due to soil lithology, and 1.4% by sampling location. The proportion of denitrifiers varied with land use management. In industrial and schoolyard sites, the abundance of the nosZII bacterial community increased while nirK abundance declined. Our data showed that land use and lithology have a moderate impact on the bacterial assemblages in urban and peri-urban areas of Lefkosia. As the nosZII bacterial community is important to the N2O sink capacity of soils, it would be interesting to elucidate the factors contributing to the proliferation of the nosZII clade in these soils.

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Direct and indirect effects of urban gardening on aboveground and belowground diversity influencing soil multifunctionality

Cited by 42 publications

References 80 publications

Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary

Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary

Indigenous plants promote insect biodiversity in urban greenspaces

Land use in urban areas impacts the composition of soil bacterial communities involved in nitrogen cycling. A case study from Lefkosia (Nicosia) Cyprus

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