Abstract
Growing native plants in urban gardens is often promoted as a possible means of increasing lepidopteran populations. However, the efficacy of such efforts has not been well studied. Lepidopterans vary widely in their ability to survive in cities, and the few previous studies of caterpillar abundance or biomass across an urban-rural gradient have yielded mixed results. We placed clay caterpillar models in native plant gardens to assess whether the attack rate on these models varied with degree of urbanization (percent impervious surface within 1 km radius of each garden), and whether responses differed across predator taxa. We also examined how garden characteristics (plant biovolume density, plant species richness) affected probability of attack. Overall, attack rates on these models decreased with increasing impervious surface, although predator taxa varied in their sometimes complex responses. For parasitoid wasps, which accounted for 47% of all attacks, increasing biovolume density increased attack probability at impervious surface levels below 35%, but decreased the probability of attack at higher levels of impervious surface. In contrast, probabilities of attack by both predatory wasps and vertebrates decreased with increasing percent impervious surface, but did not vary with impervious surface for ants and spiders. Predation on caterpillars in urban gardens may be lower than in rural ones; however, this potential increase in survival may be a result of declines in some predator taxa, such as predatory wasps and insectivorous birds. More studies across an urban gradient are needed to measure factors other than predation that influence caterpillar survival in gardens.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Olivia Rumble and Lauren Kappel for helping with plant species counts and biovolume measurements, and Haileigh Arnold for assisting with ArcGIS data. For access to the native plant gardens, we thank the Louisville Nature Center, Olmsted Parks Conservancy, the Parklands of Floyds Fork, Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, Copper and Kings American brandy company ®, Harriet A. Korfhage Native Plant Garden, Old Louisville Community Garden, Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville Catholic Schools, St. Francis School, and all the people who allowed us to work in their private gardens.
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This study was funded in part by University of Louisville Summer Research Opportunity Program grants to Amy Cherry and Jacob Lawson. Summer Research Opportunity Program, a University of Louisville internal grant.
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LDN, PKE and MMC designed the study. All authors participated in field work. LDN performed the data analyses, and LDN, PKE, and MMC wrote the paper. All authors gave final approval for publication.
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Data from this study will be made available at Dryad digital depository upon final acceptance.
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Nason, L.D., Eason, P.K., Carreiro, M.M. et al. Caterpillar survival in the city: attack rates on model lepidopteran larvae along an urban-rural gradient show no increase in predation with increasing urban intensity. Urban Ecosyst 24, 1129–1140 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01091-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01091-2