ORCID Profile
0000-0002-4142-8666
Current Organisation
University of California, San Diego
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2015
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-04-2021
DOI: 10.1002/EAP.2309
Abstract: The contribution of urban greenspaces to support bio ersity and provide benefits for people is increasingly recognized. However, ongoing management practices favor vegetation oversimplification, often limiting greenspaces to lawns and tree canopy rather than multi‐layered vegetation that includes under‐ and midstorey, and the use of nonnative species. These practices hinder the potential of greenspaces to sustain indigenous bio ersity, particularly for taxa like insects that rely on plants for food and habitat. Yet, little is known about which plant species may maximize positive outcomes for taxonomically and functionally erse insect communities in greenspaces. Additionally, while cities are expected to experience high rates of introductions, quantitative assessments of the relative occupancy of indigenous vs. introduced insect species in greenspace are rare, hindering understanding of how management may promote indigenous bio ersity while limiting the establishment of introduced insects. Using a hierarchically replicated study design across 15 public parks, we recorded occurrence data from 552 insect species on 133 plant species, differing in planting design element (lawn, midstorey, and tree canopy), midstorey growth form (forbs, lilioids, graminoids, and shrubs) and origin (nonnative, native, and indigenous), to assess (1) the relative contributions of indigenous and introduced insect species and (2) which plant species sustained the highest number of indigenous insects. We found that the insect community was overwhelmingly composed of indigenous rather than introduced species. Our findings further highlight the core role of multi‐layered vegetation in sustaining high insect bio ersity in urban areas, with indigenous midstorey and canopy representing key elements to maintain rich and functionally erse indigenous insect communities. Intriguingly, graminoids supported the highest indigenous insect richness across all studied growth forms by plant origin groups. Our work highlights the opportunity presented by indigenous understory and midstorey plants, particularly indigenous graminoids, in our study area to promote indigenous insect bio ersity in urban greenspaces. Our study provides a blueprint and stimulus for architects, engineers, developers, designers, and planners to incorporate into their practice plant species palettes that foster a larger presence of indigenous over regionally native or nonnative plant species, while incorporating a broader mixture of midstorey growth forms.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 24-12-2015
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-2023
Abstract: The detrimental effects of environmental change on human and non‐human ersity are acutely manifested in urban environments. While urban greenspaces are known to mitigate these effects and support functionally erse ecological communities, evidence of the ecological outcomes of urban greening remains scarce. We use a longitudinal observational design to provide empirical evidence of positive ecological changes brought about by greening actions. We collected a plant–insect interactions data set 1 year before, and for 3 years after, a greenspace received a small greening action within a densely urbanised municipality. We then assessed how (i) insect species richness (ii) the probabilities of occurrence, survival and colonisation of the insect community and (iii) the plant–insect network structure varied across the 4 years of the study. As we understand, this is the first study to apply statistical and network analytical frameworks to quantitatively track how positive ecological changes accrue over time at a site after the implementation of a specific urban greening action. We show how a small greening action quickly led to large positive changes in the richness, demographic dynamics and network structure of a depauperate insect community. An increase in the ersity and complexity of the plant community led to, after only 3 years, a large increase in insect species richness, a greater probability of occurrence of insects within the greenspace and a higher number and ersity of interactions between insects and plant species. We demonstrate how large positive ecological changes may be derived from investing in small greening actions and how these contribute to bring indigenous species back to greenspaces where they have become rare or been extirpated by urbanisation. Our findings provide crucial evidence that supports best practice in greenspace design and contributes to re‐invigorate policies aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of urbanisation on people and other species.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-02-2017
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 20-10-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2016
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 16-11-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.11.14.516526
Abstract: The bioblitz phenomenon has recently branched into cities, presenting exciting opportunities for local governments to channel participants’ efforts toward local issues. The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is one such initiative that has been quickly uptaken by hundreds of municipalities worldwide. Despite high participation, we still lack a framework for evaluating how the CNC contributes to local bio ersity knowledge and to inform local government practices. Here, we develop such a tool and present a case study that illustrates its applicability. We demonstrate that the collected records contributed to a better understanding of contemporary, local bio ersity patterns and provided a more realistic representation of understudied groups such as insects and fungi. Importantly, we show that the CNC presented local governments with a cost-effective tool to make informed, evidence-based management and policy decisions, improve education and engagement programs, foster cross-council collaborations, and support a stronger sense of environmental stewardship within the local community.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-09-2014
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-02-2022
DOI: 10.1002/PAN3.10301
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-01-2017
DOI: 10.1038/SREP40970
Abstract: Insects are key components of urban ecological networks and are greatly impacted by anthropogenic activities. Yet, few studies have examined how insect functional groups respond to changes to urban vegetation associated with different management actions. We investigated the response of herbivorous and predatory heteropteran bugs to differences in vegetation structure and ersity in golf courses, gardens and parks. We assessed how the species richness of these groups varied amongst green space types, and the effect of vegetation volume and plant ersity on trophic- and species-specific occupancy. We found that golf courses sustain higher species richness of herbivores and predators than parks and gardens. At the trophic- and species-specific levels, herbivores and predators show strong positive responses to vegetation volume. The effect of plant ersity, however, is distinctly species-specific, with species showing both positive and negative responses. Our findings further suggest that high occupancy of bugs is obtained in green spaces with specific combinations of vegetation structure and ersity. The challenge for managers is to boost green space conservation value through actions promoting synergistic combinations of vegetation structure and ersity. Tackling this conservation challenge could provide enormous benefits for other elements of urban ecological networks and people that live in cities.
Publisher: International Commission for Plant Pollinator Relations
Date: 27-07-2022
DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2022)695
Abstract: During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 an impromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media and personal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of the flower visits and plants in gardens. The surveys involved 67 rural, suburban and urban gardens, of various sizes, ranging from 61.18° North in Norway to 37.96° South in Australia, resulting in a data set of 25,174 rows, with each row being a unique interaction record for that date/site lant species, and comprising almost 47,000 visits to flowers, as well as records of flowers that were not visited by pollinators, for over 1,000 species and varieties belonging to more than 460 genera and 96 plant families. The more than 650 species of flower visitors belong to 12 orders of invertebrates and four of vertebrates. In this first publication from the project, we present a brief description of the data and make it freely available for any researchers to use in the future, the only restriction being that they cite this paper in the first instance. The data generated from these global surveys will provide scientific evidence to help us understand the role that private gardens (in urban, rural and suburban areas) can play in conserving insect pollinators and identify management actions to enhance their potential.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-03-2017
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-04-2020
DOI: 10.1002/PAN3.10088
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-05-2022
DOI: 10.1007/S11252-022-01240-9
Abstract: Invertebrates comprise the most ersified animal group on Earth. Due to their long evolutionary history and small size, invertebrates occupy a remarkable range of ecological niches, and play an important role as “ecosystem engineers” by structuring networks of mutualistic and antagonistic ecological interactions in almost all terrestrial ecosystems. Urban forests provide critical ecosystem services to humans, and, as in other systems, invertebrates are central to structuring and maintaining the functioning of urban forests. Identifying the role of invertebrates in urban forests can help elucidate their importance to practitioners and the public, not only to preserve bio ersity in urban environments, but also to make the public aware of their functional importance in maintaining healthy greenspaces. In this review, we examine the multiple functional roles that invertebrates play in urban forests that contribute to ecosystem service provisioning, including pollination, predation, herbivory, seed and microorganism dispersal and organic matter decomposition, but also those that lead to disservices, primarily from a public health perspective, e.g., transmission of invertebrate-borne diseases. We then identify a number of ecological filters that structure urban forest invertebrate communities, such as changes in habitat structure, increased landscape imperviousness, microclimatic changes and pollution. We also discuss the complexity of ways that forest invertebrates respond to urbanisation, including acclimation, local extinction and evolution. Finally, we present management recommendations to support and conserve viable and erse urban forest invertebrate populations into the future.
Location: United States of America
No related grants have been discovered for Luis Mata.