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Cityscape quality and resource manipulation affect natural enemy biodiversity in and fidelity to urban agroecosystems

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Abstract

Context

Complex landscapes with high resource availability can support more diverse natural enemy communities and better natural pest control by providing resources and facilitating organism dispersal. Moreover, in agricultural landscapes, local agroecosystem management can support biodiversity maintenance and pest control by adding resources in less complex landscapes with fewer resources. However, we lack an understanding of how local and landscape factors interact to affect natural enemy communities and their site fidelity to agroecosystems in urban landscapes (i.e., cityscapes).

Objective

To better understand how local and landscape factors influence natural enemies in urban agroecosystems, we used urban community gardens as a model system to test if and how local resource manipulation and differences in cityscape quality affect natural enemy (ladybird beetles, parasitoid wasps) communities and their fidelity to urban habitats.

Methods

We performed two manipulations. First, we added local floral resources in 6 of 12 gardens situated in different cityscapes to measure differences in natural enemy biodiversity. Second, in those 12 gardens, with and without resource additions, we manipulated populations of a common natural enemy, Hippodamia convergens, to assess fidelity to the gardens.

Results

Floral resource additions increased parasitoid abundance and changed community composition, but had little effect on ladybeetle abundance, richness or site fidelity. Rather, ladybeetle fidelity to gardens was lower in gardens in low quality cityscapes with high impervious cover.

Conclusions

Cityscape quality influences natural enemies in and fidelity to gardens. Landscape-moderated biodiversity patterns observed in rural landscapes likely differ from urban contexts with implications for pest control.

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Acknowledgments

We thank C. Adams, Y. Byun, M. Cely-Santos, H. Cohen, E. Connor, D. Hafalia-Yackel, E. Jiménez-Soto, C. Sanchez, and J. Shaw for field and lab assistance. We thank the UCSC Greenhouse Staff J. Velzy and M. Dillingham for growing the experimental plants. We thank C. Anton, T. Ong, J. Suraci, and the Philpott lab group for helpful discussion and feedback on the manuscript. We thank the following gardens and organizations for supporting and providing access for our research: Aptos Community Garden, Beach Flats Community Garden, Live Oak Green Grange Community Garden, MEarth, Mesa Verde Gardens, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Obama Way Community Garden, Pacific Grove Community Garden, Salinas Chinatown Community Garden and Community Garden of Salinas. This work was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship #2016174835 (to M.H.E), a Heller Graduate Research Grant from UC Santa Cruz (to M.H.E), and a United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Award #2016-67019-25185 (to S.M.P. and H.L.). We thank the reviewers for their constructive comments that significantly improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA

    Monika H. Egerer, Peter Bichier & Stacy M. Philpott

  2. Biology Department, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR, 97202-8199, USA

    Heidi Liere

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  1. Monika H. Egerer
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Contributions

Author contributions

MHE, SMP and HL conceived of the study and designed the field experiments. MHE, SMP, HL, and PB carried out the field experiments. MHE conducted statistical analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors improved the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Monika H. Egerer.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Data have been made available in the supporting documents.

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Egerer, M.H., Liere, H., Bichier, P. et al. Cityscape quality and resource manipulation affect natural enemy biodiversity in and fidelity to urban agroecosystems. Landscape Ecol 33, 985–998 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0645-9

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