Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extend
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Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary Emilie E. Ellis 1,2
&
Tom L. Wilkinson 1
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract ‘Wildlife-friendly’ gardening is a dominant theme in the media that readily engages public attention. However, there is little empirical evidence of the ecological benefits of increased habitat quality of individual domestic gardens. This study uses lighttrapping to examine the response of moth assemblages to domestic gardens that are assessed in terms of their habitat complexity (simple and complex) both within the garden and extending out to a 30 m radius that includes surrounding habitats. The results clearly show that moth assemblages were influenced by complex habitats (particularly increasing levels of the variable shrubs and decreasing levels of artificial surfaces), but only at a scale that extended beyond the garden boundary to include the surrounding area. In other words, neither the complexity of the habitat within the garden or the size of the garden had any influence on the abundance or diversity of the moth assemblage. These results have implications for both garden management and landscape planning – if domestic gardens are to be a useful component of strategies to reduce biodiversity loss within the urban environment then they should provide good habitat quality and be managed as a network of interconnected patches rather than as individual units. Keywords Urban ecology . Domestic gardens . Biodiversity . Habitat complexity . Scale . Moth assemblage
Introduction Habitat plasticity in urban areas has been shown to provide a unique opportunity to develop urban green spaces as ecological biodiversity refuges that are under threat elsewhere (e.g. Pickett et al. 2001; Breuste 2004; Snep et al. 2005; Parsons et al. 2006). Smaller green spaces such as urban domestic gardens remain one of the least studied components of the urban green environment (Cameron et al. 2012) despite their potential to act as biodiversity refuges, increase matrix permeability as wildlife corridors and ‘stepping stones’ (Gaston et al. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-020-01050-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Emilie E. Ellis [email protected] 1
UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
2
Department of Animal and Plant Science, The University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
2005; Goddard et al. 2010; Owen 2010), and to provide supplementary habitats for urban wildlife (Davies et al. 2009). Domestic gardens can account for a substantial amount of the green spaces found in urban areas. In the UK, for example, 24% of London’s total land area is composed of domestic gardens (Smith 2010) and 87% of all UK households have access to a garden (Gibbons et al. 2011). Similarly, 25% of Dublin City and 50% of Dunedin, New Z
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