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Moth species richness, abundance and diversity in fragmented urban woodlands: implications for conservation and management strategies

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Abstract

Urban expansion threatens global biodiversity through the destruction of natural and semi-natural habitats and increased levels of disturbance. Whilst woodlands in urban areas may reduce the impact of urbanisation on biodiversity, they are often subject to under or over-management and consist of small, fragmented patches which may be isolated. Effective management strategies for urban woodland require an understanding of the ecology and habitat requirements of all relevant taxa. Yet, little is known of how invertebrate, and in particular moth, assemblages utilise urban woodland despite being commonly found within the urban landscape. Here we show that the abundance, species richness, and species diversity of moth assemblages found within urban woodlands are determined by woodland vegetation character, patch configuration and the surrounding landscape. In general, mature broadleaved woodlands supported the highest abundance and diversity of moths. Large compact woodlands with proportionally less edge exposed to the surrounding matrix were associated with higher moth abundance than small complex woodlands. Woodland vegetation characteristics were more important than the surrounding landscape, suggesting that management at a local scale to ensure provision of good quality habitat may be relatively more important for moth populations than improving habitat connectivity across the urban matrix. Our results show that the planting of broadleaved woodlands, retaining mature trees and minimising woodland fragmentation will be beneficial for moth assemblages.

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Acknowledgments

We would like thank Rebekah Mayhew, Lena Olley, Catherine Gibson-Poole and the numerous volunteers who helped with the data collection. We would like to offer special thanks to Keith Bland (National Museum of Scotland) for identifying micromoth species and Robert Dawson for macromoth identification. We also thank Keith Summerville, Thomas Merckx and one anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on the manuscript. This project was supported by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and Nuffield Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biological and Environmental Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Cottrell Building, Stirling, Scotland, FK9 4LA, UK

    Paul R. Lintott, Nils Bunnefeld, Elisa Fuentes-Montemayor, Jeroen Minderman, Lorna M. Blackmore & Kirsty J. Park

  2. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK

    Dave Goulson

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  1. Paul R. Lintott
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  2. Nils Bunnefeld
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  7. Kirsty J. Park
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Correspondence to Paul R. Lintott.

Additional information

Communicated by Jari Niemela.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 3.

Table 3 The relative abundance of tree species recorded within all 32 urban woodland patches
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Appendix 2

See Table 4.

Table 4 List of micromoths collected
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Appendix 3

See Table 5.

Table 5 List of macromoths collected
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Appendix 4

See Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Predicted measurements of moth assemblages plotted against woodland type; the strongest categorical predictor in each model. Error bars represent 95 % confidence intervals around the predictions. The prediction plot is calculated by setting all other parameters at their median observed values in the model

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Appendix 5

See Fig. 5.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Interaction plots of moth abundance for patch configuration variables

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Lintott, P.R., Bunnefeld, N., Fuentes-Montemayor, E. et al. Moth species richness, abundance and diversity in fragmented urban woodlands: implications for conservation and management strategies. Biodivers Conserv 23, 2875–2901 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0753-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-014-0753-z

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