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Community heterogeneity of aquatic macroinvertebrates in urban ponds at a multi-city scale

Hill, M. J.; Biggs, J.; Thornhill, I.; Briers, R. A.; Ledger, M.; Gledhill, D. G.; Wood, P. J.; Hassall, C.

Authors

M. J. Hill

J. Biggs

I. Thornhill

M. Ledger

D. G. Gledhill

P. J. Wood

C. Hassall



Abstract

Purpose
Urbanisation is a leading cause of biotic homogenisation in urban ecosystems. However, there has been little research examining the effect of urbanisation and biotic homogenisation on aquatic communities, and few studies have compared findings across different urban landscapes. We assessed the processes that structure aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity within five UK urban settlements and characterise the heterogeneity of pond macroinvertebrate communities within and among urban areas.
Methods
A total of 132 ponds were sampled for invertebrates to characterise biological communities of ponds across five UK cities. Variation among sites within cities, and variation among cities, was partitioned into components of beta diversity relating to turnover and nestedness.
Results
We recorded 337 macroinvertebrate taxa, and species turnover almost entirely accounted for the high beta-diversity recorded within each urban area and when all ponds were considered. A total of 40% of all macroinvertebrates recorded were unique to a particular urban settlement. In contrast to the homogenisation of terrestrial and lotic communities in urban landscapes reported in the literature, ponds support highly heterogeneous communities within and among urban settlements.
Conclusions
The high species turnover (species replacement) recorded in this study demonstrates that urban pond biodiversity conservation would be most efficient at a landscape-scale, rather than at individual ponds. Pond conservation practices need to consider the spatial organization of ecological communities (landscape-scale) to ensure that the maximum possible biodiversity can be protected.

Citation

Hill, M. J., Biggs, J., Thornhill, I., Briers, R. A., Ledger, M., Gledhill, D. G., Wood, P. J., & Hassall, C. (2018). Community heterogeneity of aquatic macroinvertebrates in urban ponds at a multi-city scale. Landscape Ecology, 33(3), 389-405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0608-1

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 2, 2018
Online Publication Date Jan 17, 2018
Publication Date 2018-03
Deposit Date Jan 9, 2018
Publicly Available Date Jan 9, 2018
Journal Landscape Ecology
Print ISSN 0921-2973
Electronic ISSN 1572-9761
Publisher BMC
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 33
Issue 3
Pages 389-405
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-018-0608-1
Keywords Beta-diversity, landscape-scale conservation, lentic habitat, species turnover, anthropogenic landscape
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1024669
Contract Date Jan 9, 2018

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons
license, and indicate if changes were made.


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Copyright Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons
license, and indicate if changes were made.








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