Journal article
Conserving insect assemblages in urban landscapes: accounting for species-specific responses and imperfect detection
L Mata, M Goula, AK Hahs
Journal of Insect Conservation | Published : 2014
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,..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Helena Casellas, Josep Sola and Araceli Torro 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 Agencia de Gestio 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.