Can butterflies cope with city life? Butterfly diversity in a young megacity in southern China.

Kong-Wah Sing,John-James Wilson,Wen-Zhi Wang,Hui Dong,Vlad Dincă

doi:10.1139/gen-2015-0192

Abstract

During 30 years of unprecedented urbanization, plant diversity in Shenzhen, a young megacity in southern China, has increased dramatically. Although strongly associated with plant diversity, butterfly diversity generally declines with urbanization, but this has not been investigated in Shenzhen. Considering the speed of urbanization in Shenzhen and the large number of city parks, we investigated butterfly diversity in Shenzhen parks. We measured butterfly species richness in four microhabitats (groves, hedges, flowerbeds, and unmanaged areas) across 10 parks and examined the relationship with three park variables: park age, park size, and distance from the central business district. Butterflies were identified based on wing morphology and DNA barcoding. We collected 1933 butterflies belonging to 74 species from six families; 20% of the species were considered rare. Butterfly species richness showed weak negative correlations with park age and distance from the central business district, but the positive correlation with park size was statistically significant (p = 0.001). Among microhabitat types, highest species richness was recorded in unmanaged areas. Our findings are consistent with others in suggesting that to promote urban butterfly diversity it is necessary to make parks as large as possible and to set aside areas for limited management. In comparison to neighbouring cities, Shenzhen parks have high butterfly diversity.

Highlights

China is currently one of the world’s fastest urbanizing countries (Schneider et al 2015)
Of the 74 species sampled in Shenzhen parks, 84% were assigned Linnaean species names based on the current composition of the Barcode of Life Datasystems (BOLD) reference library
Most of the DNA barcodes generated for this study were identified based on matches to DNA barcodes from Peninsular Malaysia for which a DNA barcode reference library is available (Wilson et al 2013)

Summary

Introduction

China is currently one of the world’s fastest urbanizing countries (Schneider et al 2015). A prime example of China’s rapid urbanization is Shenzhen, one of the component cities of the Pearl River Delta megacity in subtropical southern China. The location of Shenzhen has been a site of human habitation for a few centuries, but designation as a Special Economic Zone in 1979 started a phase of unprecedented urban development. Shenzhen is categorized as a developed, level-one city, with the same status as three other Chinese cities—Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai (Ye et al 2012). In contrast to other cities in China, famous for their pollution, Shenzhen is an “ecological garden city”, with half of its total area under a form of environmental protection that prohibits construction (Jim 2009). Shenzhen has been awarded the titles “China’s Best 10 Cities for Greening”, “National Garden City”, “Nations in Bloom”, “National Greening Pioneer”, and was shortlisted in the United Nations Environment Program’s Global 500 Laureate Roll of Honor (Shenzhen Municipal E-government Resources Center 2015)

Methods

Results

Conclusion