Landscape Context Influences the Abundance and Richness of Native Lady Beetles Occupying Urban Vacant Land
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Landscape Context Influences the Abundance and Richness of Native Lady Beetles Occupying Urban Vacant Land Denisha M. Parker 1
&
Katherine J. Turo 1 & Yvan A. Delgado de la flor 1 & Mary M. Gardiner 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Urban insect communities are structured by hierarchical filters including regional processes, human facilitation, and species interactions. We sought to inform future urban conservation endeavors by identifying how landscape composition and configuration as well as the management of vacant lot greenspaces affect native lady beetle (Coccinellidae) community structure within the city of Cleveland, Ohio, USA. We found no effect of habitat treatment on native lady beetle abundance when comparing vacant lots seeded with native wildflowers and those with naturally occurring weedy vegetation mown monthly or annually. Nonetheless, establishing conservation plantings that vary in plant height, biomass, and bloom abundance could aid in supporting a greater richness of coccinellid species, as these variables had differential effects on the abundance of fungivorous and aphidophagous feeding guilds. Further, we found that vacant lots embedded within landscapes with increased impervious surface and a high degree of greenspace isolation contained fewer aphidophagous native and exotic lady beetles. Our findings suggest that landscape context is a critical consideration when aiming to utilize vacant land as conservation habitat for coccinellids. Given their large holdings of vacant land, shrinking cities offer a unique opportunity to incorporate landscape-scale planning into future sustainable development initiatives. For instance, with over 27,000 vacant lots, the city of Cleveland could aid lady beetle conservation by electing to maintain vacant lots that promote greenspace connectivity while targeting isolated lots within intact neighborhoods for new residential development. Keywords Shrinking city . Invasive species . Urban greenspace . Habitat management . Urbanization . Coccinellidae . Filters
Introduction Changes in landscape heterogeneity associated with urbanization can alter the composition of regional species able to inhabit remaining fragmented habitat patches, generally causing a decrease in native species abundance and richness (McIntyre 2000; Shochat et al. 2010; Pickett et al. 2011; Geslin et al. 2013). In an urbanizing world, native species are threatened by changes in habitat quality, quantity, and configuration coupled with additional stressors such as pollution and increased competition for prey from urban-adapted exotic taxa (Crooks et al. 2004; Hung et al. 2017; McKinney 2006). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01000-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Denisha M. Parker [email protected] 1
Department of Entomology, The Ohio State University, 2021 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH 43210, U.S.A.
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