scholarly journals Main macroinvertebrate community drivers and niche properties for characteristic species in urban/rural and lotic/lentic systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Savić ◽  
Andrzej Zawal ◽  
Edyta Stępień ◽  
Vladimir Pešić ◽  
Robert Stryjecki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Composition ◽  
Macroinvertebrate Communities ◽  
Urban Habitats ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Characteristic Species ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
Study Sites ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe effect of urbanization is often reflected both in lotic and lentic habitats, through changes in diversity and structural and compositional changes in macroinvertebrate communities. In this study, we focused on macroinvertebrate assemblage in lotic and lentic ecosystems of the Krąpiel River catchment area (NW Poland) with the following aims: (1) to determine the main driver in structuring lotic and lentic macroinvertebrate communities and the factors that influence them in urban versus rural landscapes; (2) to test whether the diversity of macroinvertebrate assemblages in urban lotic/lentic ecosystems is lower than that in rural landscapes; (3) to identify characteristic macroinvertebrate species for urban and rural lotic/lentic ecosystems; to (4) determine species tolerance ranges and species optimums, with special emphasis on characteristic “urban” and “rural” species. Distance from study sites to built-up areas and conductivity were the main factors contributing to the separation of urban vs. rural habitats. For lotic sites, temperature, the percentage of built-up area, insolation, and oxygen concentration were the main factors significantly associated with changes in community composition. For lentic sites, insolation, temperature, and BOD5 were recognized as the main factors which are significantly associated with changes in community composition. The results for lentic habitats were as expected: average species richness was higher in rural than in urban habitats. The characteristic species for each of the four habitat groups included Mideopsis orbicularis for Lentic rural habitats; Hygrobates longipalpis for Lotic rural habitats; Piona sp. for Lentic urban habitats; Mideopsis crassipes for Lotic urban habitats. Hygrobates longipalpis and Piona sp. were at the opposite sides with respect to the degree of urbanization. Result of this investigation has shown that the impact of urbanization and consequently the implementation of conservation measures should be viewed separately within the lentic and lotic gradient.

scholarly journals Spatial patterns of habitat distribution of Corvidae (the case of urban-rural gradient)

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
А. A. Zimaroyeva ◽  
A. V. Matsyura ◽  
K. Jankowski
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Average Density ◽  
Winter Period ◽  
Breeding Period ◽  
Urban Habitats ◽  
Common Raven ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Hooded Crows ◽  
The Impact

The spatial distribution and abundance of Corvidae species in Zhytomyr region was studied in terms of the urban-rural gradient. We selected Rook (Corvus frugilegus L.), Eurasian Jackdaw (C. monedula L.), Hooded Crow (C. cornix L.), Common Raven (C. corax L.), Eurasian Magpie (Pica pica L.) and Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius L.) for our observations during 2009–2012. Some 38 survey routes totaling more than 8000 km were surveyed in 21 settlements in Zhytomyr region. Among them 13 routes were in Zhytomyr city. The average density of Rooks was 55.9 birds/km2. We found a strong correlation between Rook density and rural-urban gradient and observed that the numbers of wintering Rooks in cities significantly increased due to the influx from villages. The peak number of Rooks in villages was registered in the breeding and post-breeding seasons while in the cities it was high in winter and during the spring migration. The average density of Eurasian Magpies in the study area was 8.7 birds/km2 and we registered weak correlation with the urban-rural gradient. Their maximum density in urban habitats was in the winter period whereas the highest density in rural habitats was fixed in the summer months. The density of Magpies varied insignificantly within a narrow range during the three years of research, which suggests the species has successfully adjusted to the transformed landscapes. Average density of Hooded Crows in towns was 6.6 birds/km2. The linear relationship between the urban-rural gradient and the density of this species was rather weak. In the breeding period, the birds’ density was considerably higher in urban habitats. We also registered that the average density of Hooded Crows changed insignificantly but gradually increased during the study period. The average density of Eurasian Jackdaws was 9.7 birds/km2 and had high annual dynamics. It also changed significantly during the three years of research. The average density of Eurasian Jays was 2.4 birds/km2 and varied significantly in different settlements, although the fluctuation range was small (0.1–9.3 birds/km2). We registered an expansion in the breeding distribution of Eurasian Jays in recent years i.e. the birds began to nest in old urban neighborhoods and small central parks of large cities. However, the number of birds naturally decreased along the gradient of landscape transformation. The impact of urban-rural gradient on Eurasian Jay density was significant but the correlation was weak and negative. The density of this species was highest in small villages (4.9 birds/km2) and the lowest in medium-sized cities (1.5 birds/km2). The seasonal density of Jays varied significantly and the greatest value was registered in the post-breeding period. In urban areas the birds’ density was much higher in winter compared to the nesting period, and in villages we observed the reverse situation. The number of Eurasian Jays remained almost stable in all the settlements during the study period indicating the stability of the local populations. The average density of the Common Raven was 1.3 birds/km2 and the highest density was registered in small villages (2.2 birds/km2), the lowest – in the townships (small urban type settlements) (0.6 birds/km2). The urban-rural gradient significantly affected the spatial distribution of Common Ravens, but we cannot claim an increase or decrease in their numbers along the gradient of urbanization, since the value of this indicator also depended on habitat conditions in each specific settlement. The spatial distribution of Common Ravens varied seasonally and the highest density was typical in winter due to food migrations towards human settlements.

scholarly journals Impact of different habitat parameters on carabid beetle assemblages in selected areas of a forest-field landscape in Poland – 10 years of data

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (Suppl.) ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Axel Schwerk ◽  
Agata Jojczyk ◽  
Izabela Dymitryszyn
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Carabid Beetle ◽  
Carabid Beetles ◽  
Organic Layer ◽  
Forest Site ◽  
Forest Stands ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Beetle Assemblages ◽  
Study Sites ◽  
The Impact

Long-term data on carabid beetles assemblages on differently managed study sites in forests and open areas were analysed to study the impact of selected environmental factors on the carabid assemblages of both the individual study sites over the years and the set of all study sites in selected years.Ordination separated forest stands from open areas along with the first, and samples of 2011 from those of 2015 along the second axis. For study sites in forest stands in most cases, precipitation was a significant factor, especially precipitation in the year before the inventory. However, for the youngest forest site, the year of the study was most important, indicating a succession process. For study sites in open areas, both precipitation and temperature showed most often significant results. Analysing the impact of environmental factors on carabid assemblages in the full set of study sites in 2011 and 2015 revealed carbon content in the organic layer and distance from the nearest forest as significant factors. The results of the study extend our knowledge on the impact of environmental factors on the formation of carabid beetle assemblages in rural landscapes, which is essential in the framework of developing biodiversity conservation strategies.

scholarly journals Changes in Fungal Community Structure in Freshwater Canals across a Gradient of Urbanization

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1917
Author(s):  
Tianma Yuan ◽  
Haihan Zhang ◽  
Qiaoli Feng ◽  
Xiangyu Wu ◽  
Yixin Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Composition ◽  
Fungal Community ◽  
Water Samples ◽  
Fungal Diversity ◽  
Alpha Diversity ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Fungal Community Composition ◽  
Sampling Locations ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
The Impact

Fungi are an important, yet often, neglected component of the aquatic microflora, and is responsible for primary decomposition and further processing of organic matter. By comparison, the ecological roles of terrestrial fungi have been well-studied, but the diversity and function of fungi that populate aquatic environments remain poorly understood. Here, the impact of urbanization on fungal diversity and community composition in the canal system of Suzhou was assessed by sequencing the internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) region of the rRNA operon. It was amplified from environmental DNA that has been extracted from water samples and pre-deployed decomposing leaves collected from nine sampling locations (high, medium and low urbanization) over two seasons. The fungal diversity and community composition were determined by bioinformatic analysis of the large DNA sequence datasets generated to identify operational taxonomic units (OTUs) for phylogenetic assignment; over 1 million amplicons were sequenced from 36 samples. The alpha-diversity estimates showed high differences in fungal diversity between water and leaf samples, and winter versus summer. Higher numbers of fungal OTUs were identified in both water and leaf samples collected in the summer, and fungal diversity was also generally higher in water than on colonized leaves in both seasons. The fungal community on leaves was usually dominated by Ascomycetes, especially in winter, while water samples contained more diversity at phylum level with Chytridiomycetes often prominent, particularly in summer. At a genus level, a very high relative abundance of Alternaria on leaves was observed in winter at all locations, in contrast to very low abundance of this genus across all water samples. Fungal community composition also varied between sampling locations (i.e., urbanization); in cluster analysis, samples from high urbanization locations formed a distinct cluster, with medium and low urbanization samples clustering together or in some instances, separately. Redundancy analysis shed further light on the relationships between variation in fungal community composition and water physico-chemical properties. Fungal community diversity variation and correlation with different parameters is discussed in detail, but overall, the influence of season outweighed that of urbanization. This study is significant in cataloguing the impact of urbanization on fungal diversity to inform future restoration of urban canal systems on the importance of protecting the natural aquatic fungal flora.

“Land fever” and “Bankruptcy”: Social Problems in Hanoi’s Urbanizing Peri-urban Communities

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 550-562
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Credit Market ◽  
Urbanization Process ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
The Impact

Drawn upon field research in two peri-urban villages of Hanoi in 2014 and short re-visits recently, the research examines the widespread of gambling and other social issues in Hanoi’s urbanizing peri-urban communities which happened concurrently with the phenomenon of “land fever,” and at the time local villagers received compensation from land appropriation. The article aims to understand the impact of urbanization on these communities and the interface between urbanization and the increase of social problems. It argues that gambling, drug use, and other social problems have been existing in Vietnamese rural communities long before; however, when urbanization came, some people have higher chances to engage in these activities. Those are villagers who want to transform quickly into entrepreneurs or bosses by joining the “black credit” market and gambling. Together with middle-aged and old farmers who greatly relied on agricultural production and face difficulties in transforming their occupation, they formed the group of losers in the urbanization process. Received 6th January 2019; Revised 26th April 2019; Accepted 15th May 2019

scholarly journals Effects of Urbanization on Ecosystem Services in the Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration, in China: The Case of Weifang City

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Yuejuan Yang ◽  
Hao Zhang ◽  
Xinquan Zhao ◽  
Zhizhang Chen ◽  
Aiguo Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Population Data ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Nutrient Cycle ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Impact

Ecosystem services are the material basis of economic and social development, and play essential roles in the sustainable development of ecosystems. Urbanization can remarkably alter the provision of ecosystem services. Most studies in this area have focused on densely populated metropolises with poor ecological environments, while comparatively few studies have focused on cities with low ecological pressures. Therefore, to avoid continuing to engage in the repetitive pattern of destroying first and rehabilitating later, quantitative analyses of urbanization and ecosystem services should be carried out in representative cities. In this study, based on partial least squares-discriminant analysis, kernel density estimation, and correlation analysis, we quantitatively evaluated the impact of urbanization on ecosystem services in Weifang city. The Data Center for Resources and Environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research provided remote sensing data on land use, the gross domestic production (GDP), population data, and ecosystem services. The results were as follows: (1) The variation in population, GDP, and built-up areas consistently increased throughout the study period, whereas the ecosystem service values (ESVs) decreased; (2) food production, raw material production, nutrient cycle maintenance, and soil conservation were decisive ecosystem services that led to vast reductions in ESVs during the process of urbanization; and (3) the negative correlation coefficient between built-up areas and ecosystem services was greater than that between the population or GDP and ecosystem services, which indicated that the impacts of population and economic urbanization on ecosystem services lagged behind the impact of land urbanization. This study provides references for fully recognizing the ecological effects of urbanization, and make suggestions regarding the application of ecosystem services in sustainable development.

scholarly journals Are Bacterio- and Phytoplankton Community Compositions Related in Lakes Differing in Their Cyanobacteria Contribution and Physico-Chemical Properties?

Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 855
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Kokociński ◽  
Dariusz Dziga ◽  
Adam Antosiak ◽  
Janne Soininen
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Community Composition ◽  
Phytoplankton Community ◽  
Heterotrophic Bacteria ◽  
Bacterial Community Composition ◽  
Physical Factors ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Phytoplankton Community Composition ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Bacteria Communities

Bacterioplankton community composition has become the center of research attention in recent years. Bacteria associated with toxic cyanobacteria blooms have attracted considerable interest. However, little is known about the environmental factors driving the bacteria community, including the impact of invasive cyanobacteria. Therefore, our aim has been to determine the relationships between heterotrophic bacteria and phytoplankton community composition across 24 Polish lakes with different contributions of cyanobacteria including the invasive species Raphidiopsis raciborskii. This analysis revealed that cyanobacteria were present in 16 lakes, while R. raciborskii occurred in 14 lakes. Our results show that bacteria communities differed between lakes dominated by cyanobacteria and lakes with minor contributions of cyanobacteria but did not differ between lakes with R. raciborskii and other lakes. Physical factors, including water and Secchi depth, were the major drivers of bacteria and phytoplankton community composition. However, in lakes dominated by cyanobacteria, bacterial community composition was also influenced by biotic factors such as the amount of R. raciborskii, chlorophyll-a and total phytoplankton biomass. Thus, our study provides novel evidence on the influence of environmental factors and R. raciborskii on lake bacteria communities.

scholarly journals COVID-19, Urbanization Pattern and Economic Recovery: An Analysis of Hubei, China

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (24) ◽  
pp. 9577
Author(s):  
Wenyi Yang ◽  
Xueli Wang ◽  
Keke Zhang ◽  
Zikan Ke
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Development ◽  
Generalized Method Of Moments ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Population Mobility ◽  
Economic Resilience ◽  
Economic Resource ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

In the context of the rapid development of urbanization and increasing population mobility in China, the outbreak of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on China’s economy and society. This article uses China UnionPay transaction data and takes Hubei, the worst-hit region by COVID-19 in China, as an example, to conduct empirical analysis using the generalized method of moments (GMM) of the impact of current urbanization patterns on the spread of the epidemic and economic recovery from the perspectives of time, industry, and regional differences. The study found that during the different stages of COVID-19, including discovery, outbreak, and subsidence, the overall impact of urbanization on the economy in Hubei Province was first positive, then became negative, and finally gradually increased. This process had significant industrial and urban heterogeneity, which was mainly manifested in losses in tourism and catering industries that were significantly greater than those in the audio-visual entertainment and digital office industries. Similarly, the recovery speed of large cities was lower than that of small and medium-sized cities. The main reason for these differences is that the one-sided problem of urbanization is more obvious in areas with higher urbanization rates. COVID-19 has drawn attention to the development of urbanization in the future, that is, the development path of one-sided economic resource agglomeration and scale expansion should be abandoned, with greater attention paid to the improvement of service functions and the development of amenities. This transformation is necessary to enhance urban economic resilience and reduce public health risks.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Pandemic Turns Life-Science Students into “Citizen Scientists”: Data Indicate Multiple Negative Effects of Urbanization on Biota

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2992
Author(s):  
Jens Schirmel
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Ecological Data ◽  
Pollinating Insects ◽  
Impact Of Urbanization ◽  
Data Collections ◽  
The Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions strongly affect the higher education community and require diverse teaching strategies. We designed a course where we combined online teaching with independently conducted ecological data collections by students using a “citizen science” approach. The aim was to analyze the impact of urbanization on biota by comparing urban and rural grasslands. Seventy-five students successfully conducted the data collections and the results provide evidence for prevailing negative effects of urbanization. Individual numbers of ground-dwelling invertebrates (−25%) and pollinating insects (−33%) were generally lower in urban sites. Moreover, animal and seed predation were reduced in urban grasslands, indicating the potential of urbanization to alter ecosystem functions. Despite the general limitations of online teaching and citizen science approaches, outcomes of this course showed this combination can be a useful teaching strategy, which is why this approach could be used to more actively involve students in scientific research.

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