Variation in arthropod communities in response to urbanization: Seven years of arthropod monitoring in a desert city

Abstract

a b s t r a c tContinuous monitoring is essential to understand dynamics of biological communities in response to urbanization, and to provide guidance in landscape planning for conserving urban biodiversity. Arthropods serve this purpose because they are abundant and diverse in urban areas, and relatively easy to collect. Over seven years, in the Central Arizona Phoenix area, arthropod communities in three urban habitat categories were collected and compared to arthropods in natural desert using pitfall traps and non-parametric analyses. First, we tested for differences in arthropod composition, abundances, and diversity across habitats and years. Second, we examined how conclusions about arthropod diversity vary with level of taxonomic resolution. We found that arthropod community composition varied among the four habitats at all taxonomic levels tested. In particular, urban mesic habitats had generally lower diversity than natural desert habitats, although with some exceptions. In contrast, mesic habitats had higher arthropod abundance than all habitats, and fluctuations in abundance were completely independent from changes in precipitation. Taxonomic shortcuts gave overall good impressions of community differences, but finer taxonomic resolutions on certain groups of arthropods revealed distinctly different responses to urbanization (e.g., higher beetle and ant diversity in the urban habitats). Urban areas have great potential for arthropod diversity, but community composition and dynamics are notably different from natural habitats. Institutions, local governments and homeowners can make an impact in arthropod conservation by choice of landscaping, and we recommend that remnants of natural habitats within cities receive further attention in urban planning.

Does urbanization explain differences in interactions between an insect herbivore and its natural enemies and mutualists?

“…Together, these changes affect the likelihood of encountering species at higher trophic levels (Faeth et al 2005;Egerer et al 2017). Understanding how such extreme anthropogenic habitat changes may affect patterns of ecological interactions is perhaps most tractable with arthropod model systems (McIntyre 2000;Bang and Faeth 2011), but experimental studies in urban ecosystems are scarce.…”

“…Urbanization has been shown to affect the structure of insect communities, resulting in dramatic changes in their abundance and richness (McIntyre 2000;Grimm et al 2008;Raupp et al 2010;Gardiner et al 2014), most frequently leading to a loss of diversity (Kahn and Cornell 1989;Suarez et al 1998;McKinney 2002;Shochat et al 2004;Sadler et al 2006;Clark et al 2007;Magura et al 2010;Uno et al 2010;Bang and Faeth 2011;Bennett and Gratton 2012;Ramírez Restrepo and Halffter 2013). Few studies have considered how these changes influences the outcome of ecological interactions at multiple trophic levels (Shrewsbury and Raupp 2006;Bennett and Gratton 2012;Fenoglio et al 2013;Pereira-Peixoto et al 2016;Turrini et al 2016).…”

“…Distance from the town center is a variable frequently used as a proxy for urban gradients, as cities and towns frequently show gradients of urbanization from their centers to their edges, and that the biotic and abiotic factors that can potentially affect biological systems tend to follow and change as function of this gradient, resulting from variation in human population density and intensity of activity (Deichsel 2006;Clark et al 2007;Bang and Faeth 2011). The extent of impervious cover (paved surfaces, structures such as buildings and roads) causes a variety of detrimental effects on arthropods (Morse et al 2003;Sadler et al 2006;Magura et al 2008;Bennett and Gratton 2014), and it is a stronger predictor of urbanization gradients than broad classifications such as urban, suburban and rural areas (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008;Ramalho and Hobbs 2012;Savage et al 2015).…”

Wildlife-vehicle collision hotspots at US highway extents: scale and data source effects

“…Monitoring biodiversity and investigating causes of changes in biodiversity allows society to make decisions about conservation (Wilson 1999;Devictor et al 2010;Bang and Faeth 2011;Corona et al 2011) and improve management of human-wildlife conflict. Volunteer-science provides a large and robust pool of enthusiastic people interested in problem-solving and data collection.…”

Factors influencing the appearance of spider (Araneae) and beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages in nests of great reed warbler Acrocephalus arundinaceus

“…precipitation (Finnamore et al 1998;Bang & Faeth 2011), temperature (Finnamore et al 1998;Logan et al 2006;Antunes et al 2008;Touloumis & Stamou 2009) and humidity (Finnamore et al 1998;Touloumis & Stamou 2009). These environmental variables also affect the species composition and abundance of arthropods in bird nests (la Puente et al 2010).…”