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Conserving insect assemblages in urban landscapes: accounting for species-specific responses and imperfect detection

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Abstract

Understanding how global environmental change impacts insect biodiversity is central to the core principals of conservation biology. To preserve the ecosystem services provided by insects in cities, it is crucial to understand how insect species are influenced by the degree of urbanization of the surrounding landscape. Using a hierarchical occupancy–detection model, we estimated the effect of urbanization on heteropteran bug species richness and occupancy, an approach that concurrently accounts for species-specific responses and imperfect detection. We found that species richness decreased along a gradient of increasing urbanization. This trend corresponded well with species-specific trends, as approximately two-thirds of all herbivores and predatory species experienced a strong mean negative response to urbanization. These results indicate that many species are potentially at risk of local extinction as cities grow and expand in the future. A second group of species, however, showed a weak mean negative response, indicating that they are ubiquitous urban species that thrive regardless of the surrounding degree of urban disturbance. Our research suggests that as cities develop, many of the species that are currently present will become less likely to occur, and therefore assemblages in the future are likely to become more simplified. In order to preserve or increase insect biological diversity in cities, it is critical to understand how individual species are influenced by urbanization. Our finding that insects display species-specific responses to urbanization has important repercussions for decision makers charged with preserving and improving urban biodiversity and the deliverance of ecosystem services in cities.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Helena Casellas, Josep Solà and Araceli Torró for their assistance during field work, landscape characterization, insect sorting and heteropteran bug identification. We also thank Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita and Jose Lahoz-Monfort for their help with the statistical model. Field work was partially supported by the ‘Emerging Research Groups Funding Program’ (Faculty of Biology, University of Barcelona). LM wishes to acknowledge the support of funding from the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR), the Australian Government’s national Environmental Research Program (NERP) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED). AKH would like to acknowledge financial support from the Baker Foundation. The manuscript greatly benefited from the comments from three anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament de Biologia Animal, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Luis Mata & Marta Goula

  2. Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    Luis Mata

  3. Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat, Universitat of Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Marta Goula

  4. Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne c/o The School of Botany, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Amy K. Hahs

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Mata, L., Goula, M. & Hahs, A.K. Conserving insect assemblages in urban landscapes: accounting for species-specific responses and imperfect detection. J Insect Conserv 18, 885–894 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-014-9696-7

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