Abstract
The species compositions of terrestrial isopod assemblages in 150 public parks in a commuter town in Japan were investigated. Eleven species of terrestrial isopods were present, of which seven were considered native or oriental species, and four were exotic species originally distributed in the Mediterranean and European regions. An exotic species Armadillidiumvulgare Latreille, 1804 was found in all parks. Logistic model analysis indicated that the surrounding land use affected the distributions of three native species, Burmoniscuskathmandius (Schmalfuss, 1983), Ligidiumkoreanum Flasarova, 1972, and Mongoloniscuskoreanus Verhoeff, 1930, indicating that landscape properties are important factors that limit the distributions of terrestrial isopods. The present study also showed that the public parks surrounded by forests or semi-natural environments in a commuter town provide habitats for native terrestrial isopods.
Highlights
Urbanization has rapidly spread throughout the world and has changed species compositions of regions through decreased diversity of native species (McKinney 2008) and increased numbers of exotics and/or generalist species (Niemelä 1999, Kotze et al 2011), but the patterns of diversity changes are substantially different depending on biological group and climatic region (Faeth et al 2011)
Many researchers have contributed to our knowledge of urban biodiversity in recent decades (e.g., McKinney 2008, Jones and Leather 2012, Nielsen et al 2014), and some suggest that terrestrial isopods are the dominant macro-arthropods in soils of urban regions (Bolger et al 2000, Smith et al 2006, Magura et al 2008a, b, Lee and Kwon 2015)
A total of 17 isopod species was recorded in the city, eleven of which were collected in the public parks
Summary
Urbanization has rapidly spread throughout the world and has changed species compositions of regions through decreased diversity of native species (McKinney 2008) and increased numbers of exotics and/or generalist species (Niemelä 1999, Kotze et al 2011), but the patterns of diversity changes are substantially different depending on biological group and climatic region (Faeth et al 2011). Many researchers have contributed to our knowledge of urban biodiversity in recent decades (e.g., McKinney 2008, Jones and Leather 2012, Nielsen et al 2014), and some suggest that terrestrial isopods are the dominant macro-arthropods in soils of urban regions (Bolger et al 2000, Smith et al 2006, Magura et al 2008a, b, Lee and Kwon 2015). In Japan, many researchers have studied diversity of vegetation, birds, and insects in public parks (e.g., Ishii et al 1991, Hata et al 2003, Imai and Nakashizuka 2010, Hattori 2015). There has been no comprehensive study of the terrestrial isopods in public parks of Japan
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