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The aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity of urban ponds in a medium-sized European town (Loughborough, UK)

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posted on 2015-07-31, 10:30 authored by Matt Hill, Paul WoodPaul Wood, Kate Mathers
Urbanisation is one of the greatest threats to freshwater biodiversity, with the area of land covered by towns and cities predicted to increase significantly in the future. Ponds are common features in the urban landscape and have been created for a variety of reasons ranging from ornamental/amenity purposes through to the detention of urban runoff and pollution. This paper aims to quantify the aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity associated with garden, ornamental and other urban ponds in Leicestershire, UK. We examined the macroinvertebrate biodiversity of 41 urban ponds (13 garden, 12 park and 16 other urban ponds) within the town of Loughborough, UK. Park ponds supported greater macroinvertebrate richness than garden or other urban ponds. Garden ponds were the most taxon poor. Pond size was strongly correlated with macroinvertebrate diversity. Collectively, urban ponds were found to be physically and biologically heterogeneous and were characterised by high community dissimilarity. Urban ponds provide a diverse range of habitats for a mixture of common and rare aquatic macroinvertebrate taxa and represent a valuable biodiversity resource within anthropogenically dominated landscapes. Recognition of the significant contribution of ponds to urban freshwater biodiversity is important for future aquatic conservation within anthropogenically dominated landscapes.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Hydrobiologia

Citation

HILL, M.J., WOOD, P.J. and MATHERS, K.L., 2015. The aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity of urban ponds in a medium-sized European town (Loughborough, UK). Hydrobiologia, 760(1), pp.225-238.

Publisher

© Springer International Publishing

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

The definitive version of this paper is available at Springerlink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10750-015-2328-8

ISSN

0324-0924

Language

  • en