Abstract
Anthropogenic pressures can affect the distribution of species and elicit the appearance of spatial patterns that provide insights into the species’ responses to environmental filtering, mediated by their functional traits. Due to the functional redundancy in ecological communities, the spatial variations of species and functional traits can occur at different scales, but little is known on this topic, especially for soil arthropods with limited dispersion capabilities and highly dependent on environmental characteristics. The present research aims at shedding light on the spatial ecology of both the taxonomic and functional biodiversity of collembolan communities colonizing urban parks, adopted as model taxa for their functional traits, diversity and sensitivity to environmental drivers. To this end, the spatial patterns and scales of collembolan communities from 8 parks in Naples (Italy) and 14 in Montpellier (France) were investigated through an approach based on Moran eigenvector maps, modified to allow for evaluating the community spatial connectivity and the scales underpinning the spatial variation of each species and functional trait. The obtained findings demonstrate a limited spatial connectivity of collembolan communities in terms of both taxonomic and functional diversity, with mostly species-specific micro-scale variations that may be shaped by environmental constraints.
Highlights
The sustainable development of urban ecosystems pivots on networks of green infrastructures that allow preserving key ecosystem processes in otherwise constructed environments [1]
Half of the species and all the community weighted mean (CWM) in both Naples and Montpellier are associated to non-zero least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) coefficients, i.e., have non-random spatial patterns that, in addition, are described by several Moran eigenvector maps (MEM) spanning wide ranges of scales
The patterns observed in the ranking of spatial weighting matrices (SWMs) and in the choice of MEMs from the consensus SWMs, as well as the lack of relationships between MEMs and potential environmental drivers, provide clear insights into the spatial ecology of Collembola and of their functional traits
Summary
The sustainable development of urban ecosystems pivots on networks of green infrastructures that allow preserving key ecosystem processes in otherwise constructed environments [1]. The provision of suitable habitats for flora and fauna, the regulation of organic matter and biogeochemical cycles, the climate mitigation and the environmental remediation are just some of the showcase processes supported by semi-natural environments in urban ecosystems [2,3]. The interaction between these areas and the surrounding environment can be analyzed within the classical framework of island biogeography [4,5,6], with the urban tissue representing a hostile matrix that surrounds patches of habitat suitable for most of the flora and fauna. Urban parks represent most of these patches, with characteristics shaped by their size, topology, management and interaction with the surrounding matrix.
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