Abstract
Domestic gardens associated with residential zones form a major component of undeveloped land in towns and cities. Such gardens may play a vital role in maintaining biodiversity in urban areas, but explanations for the variation in the richness of species assemblages in gardens are lacking. We report the results from a case study of 12 invertebrate groups in 61 domestic gardens in the city of Sheffield, UK. The mean number of species within a taxon, recorded per garden, was no greater than 3, 10, and 20 species in litter, pitfall trap and Malaise trap samples, respectively. Relatively speciose groups exhibited high turnover between gardens, with typically 50% of the group occurring only once. In contrast, several species-poor taxa were virtually ubiquitous. Species richness was analysed by multiple regression and hierarchical tree analysis in relation to garden and landscape variables. In general, the two methods of analysis corroborated one another. In total, 22 explanatory variables entered into regression models, although 12 of them only did so once. The amount of variation in species richness explained in models was generally quite high, with the factors involved operating over a range of scales. However, the patterns that emerged were not consistent across taxa. The most important predictors of species richness, of relevance to land use planners, were components of garden vegetation, especially the abundance of trees. Likely reasons for inconsistencies in the relationships are discussed in the context of sampling and species biology.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen A.A. 1964. The Coleoptera of a suburban garden. Entomol. Rec. J. Variation 76: 261–4.
Bailey S.E.R., North M.C. and Cook L.M. 1998. Slugs and snails and thrushes’ anvils: children’s surveys of slugs and snails. J. Conchol. Special Publication 2: 171–178.
Blair R.B. 1996. Land use and avian species diversity along an urban gradient. Ecol. Appl. 6: 506–519.
Blair R.B. and Launer A.E. 1997. Butterfly assemblages and human land use: species assemblages along an urban gradient. Biol. Conserv. 80: 113–125.
Cannon A. 2000. Garden BirdWatch Handbook, 2nd ed. British Trust for Ornithology, Thetford.
Cooper D.S. 2002. Geographic associations of breeding bird distribution in an urban open space. Biol. Conserv. 104: 205–210.
Crawley M.J. 2002. Statistical Computing: An Introduction to Data Analysis using S-Plus. John Wiley and sons, Chichester, UK.
Davis B.N.K. 1978. Urbanisation and the diversity of insects. In: Mound L.A. and Waloff N. (eds), Diversity of Insect Faunas. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, pp. 126–138.
Denys C. and Schmidt H. 1998. Insect communities on experimental mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris L.) plots along an urban gradient. Oecologia 113: 269–277.
Eversham B.C., Roy D.B. and Telfer M.G. 1996. Urban, industrial and other manmade sites as analogues of natural habitats for Carabidae. Ann. Zool. Fenn. 33: 149–156.
Fernández-Juricic E. 2000. Avifaunal use of wooded streets in an urban landscape. Conserv. Biol. 14: 513–521.
Gaston K.J., Smith R.M., Thompson K. and Warren P.H. in press a. Urban domestic gardens (II): experimental tests of methods for increasing biodiversity. Biodivers. Conserv. in press.
Gaston K.J., Warren P.H., Thompson K. and Smith R.M. in press b. Urban domestic gardens (IV): the extent of the resource and its associated features. Biodivers. Conserv. in press.
Germaine S.S. and Wakeling B.F. 2001. Lizard species distributions and habitat occupation along an urban gradient in Tucson, Arizona, USA. Biol. Conserv. 97: 229–237.
Gilbert O.L. 1990. The lichen flora of urban wasteland. Lichenologist 22: 87–101.
Hardy P.B. and Dennis R.L.H. 1999. The impact of urban development on butterflies within a city region. Biodivers. Conserv. 8: 1261–1279.
Honnay O., Endels P., Vereecken H. and Hermy M. 1999. The role of patch area and habitat diversity in explaining native plant species richness in disturbed forest patches in northern Belgium. Divers. Distrib. 5: 129–141.
Jokimäki J. 1999. Occurrence of breeding bird species in urban parks: effects of park structure and broad-scale variables. Urban Ecosyst. 3: 21–34.
Kinzig A.P. and Grove J.M. 2001. Urban-suburban ecology. In: Levin S.A. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Biodiversity, Vol. 5. Academic Press, San Diego, pp. 733–745.
Martin D. and Tate N. 1997. Surpop V2.0: Introduction. http://census.ac.uk/cdu/surpop.htm.
McGeoch M.A. and Chown S.L. 1997. Impact of urbanization on a gall-inhabiting Lepidoptera assemblage: the importance of reserves in urban areas. Biodivers. Conserv. 6: 979–993.
Miotk P. 1996. The naturalized garden-a refuge for animals? — first results Zool. Anz. 235: 101–116.
Miyashita T., Shinkai A. and Chida T. 1998. The effects of forest fragmentation on web spider communities in urban areas. Biol. Conserv. 86: 357–364.
Moran M.D. 2003. Arguments for rejecting the sequential Bonferroni in ecological studies. Oikos 100: 403–405.
Ødegaard F. and Tømmerås B.Å. 2000. Compost heaps — refuges and stepping-stones for alien arthropod species in northern Europe. Divers. Distrib. 6: 45–59.
Owen J. 1991. The Ecology of a Garden: the first fifteen years. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Owen J. 2002. My Romney Marsh garden. Atropos 17: 53–57.
Pyšek P. 1993. Factors affecting the diversity of flora and vegetation in central European settlements. Vegetatio 106: 89–100.
Roy D.B., Hill M.O. and Rothery P. 1999. Effects of urban land cover on the local species pool in Britain. Ecography 22: 507–515.
Saville B. 1997. The Secret Garden: Report of the Lothian Secret Garden Survey. Lothian Wildlife Information Centre, Edinburgh.
Smith C. 1989. Butterflies and moths in suburbia. Nature Cambridgeshire 31: 19–27.
Smith R.M., Gaston K.L., Warren P.H. and Thompson K. in press. Urban domestic gardens (V): relationships between landcover composition, housing and landscape. Landscape Ecology. In press.
Soulé M.E., Bolger D.T., Alberts A.C., Wright J., Sorice M. and Hill S. 1988. Reconstructed dynamics of rapid extinctions of chaparral-requiring birds in urban habitat islands. Conserv. Biol. 2: 75–92.
Stace C. 1997. New Flora of the British Isles, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sukopp H. and Starfinger U. 1999. Disturbance in urban ecosystems. In: Walker L.R. (ed.), Ecosystems of the World 16. Ecosystems of Disturbed Ground. Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, pp. 397–412.
Thompson K., Austin K.C., Smith R.M., Warren P.H., Angold P.G. and Gaston K.J. 2003. Urban domestic gardens (I): putting small-scale plant diversity in context. J. Veg. Sci. 14: 71–78.
Thompson K., Hodgson J.G., Smith R.M., Warren P.H. and Gaston K.J. 2004. Urban domestic gardens (III): composition and diversity of lawn floras. J. Veg. Sci. 15: 371–376.
Vickery M.L. 1995. Gardens: the neglected habitat. In: Pullin A.S. (ed.), Ecology and conservation of butterflies. Chapman and Hall, London, pp. 123–134.
Wright M. 1984. The Complete Handbook of Garden Plants. Michael Joseph, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, R.M., Warren, P.H., Thompson, K., Gaston, K.J. (2005). Urban domestic gardens (VI): environmental correlates of invertebrate species richness. In: Hawksworth, D.L., Bull, A.T. (eds) Human Exploitation and Biodiversity Conservation. Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5283-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5283-5_6
Received:
Accepted:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5282-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5283-5
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)