Terrestrial isopods in urban environments: an overview.

Katalin Szlavecz,Zsolt Tóth,Elisabeth Hornung,Ferenc Vilisics

doi:10.3897/zookeys.801.29580

Abstract

In an increasingly urbanized world scientific research has shifted towards the understanding of cities as unique ecosystems. Urban land use change results in rapid and drastic changes in physical and biological properties, including that of biodiversity and community composition. Soil biodiversity research often lags behind the more charismatic groups such as vertebrates and plants. This paper attempts to fill this gap and provides an overview on urban isopod research. First, a brief overview on urban land use change is given, specifically on the major alterations on surface soils. Historical studies on urban isopods is summarized, followed by the status of current knowledge on diversity, distribution, and function of urban isopod species and communities. A review of more than 100 publications revealed that worldwide 50 cities and towns have some record of terrestrial isopod species, but only a few of those are city-scale explorations of urban fauna. A total of 110 isopod species has been recorded although the majority of them only once. The ten most frequently occurring isopods are widely distributed synanthropic species. Knowledge gaps and future research needs call for a better global dataset, long term monitoring of urban populations, multi-scale analyses of landscape properties as potential drivers of isopod diversity, and molecular studies to detect evolutionary changes.

Highlights

In 2008 humans reached a major milestone: more than 50% of the global population lives in cities (United Nation Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2011)
Two major components of biotic homogenization in urban areas are the extinction of local fauna, and the transportation of non-native, usually synanthropic species across geographical boundaries
A particular example of the latter is natural water treatment systems such as rain gardens and bioswales. These novel ecosystems are readily colonized by soil fauna, including isopods (Ayers 2009, Mehring and Levin 2015) but we do not know if their presence and activity enhance or reduce such functions as nutrient release and retention, organic matter processing, infiltration, contaminant and pathogen removal, and plant growth

Summary

Introduction

In 2008 humans reached a major milestone: more than 50% of the global population lives in cities (United Nation Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2011). Two major components of biotic homogenization in urban areas are the extinction of local fauna, and the transportation of non-native, usually synanthropic species across geographical boundaries. Information on isopod species composition and abundance is often published as part of a broader study focusing on urban soil fauna (e.g., Schaefer 1982, Fründ et al 1989, Smith et al 2006a, Jordan and Jones 2007, Bolger et al 2000).

Results

Conclusion