Loughborough University
Browse

Environmental correlates of aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity in garden ponds: Implications for pond management

Download (1.03 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2025-03-04, 10:24 authored by Matthew J. Hill, Paul WoodPaul Wood, James C. White, Ian Thornhill, Win Fairchild, Penny Williams, Pascale Nicolet, Jeremy Biggs
Garden ponds are a ubiquitous feature of urban landscapes and have the potential to be an important resource for biodiversity. However, the environmental and spatial factors influencing ecological communities within garden ponds have been poorly quantified to date, despite such evidence being critical to the development of effective management strategies that support biodiversity. This study aims to identify the environmental and spatial factors influencing macroinvertebrate richness, abundance and compositional variation among garden ponds and provide management recommendations at the local and landscape scale. In total, 99 macroinvertebrate taxa were recorded from 30 garden ponds. A negative association was recorded between ecological uniqueness (measured as the Local Contribution to Beta-Diversity) and taxonomic richness among the garden ponds, and those ponds with high ecological uniqueness typically displayed high replacement (turnover) values. Surface area, total plant richness and non-native plant richness were positively associated with macroinvertebrate richness. Taxonomic richness and abundance predominantly displayed a negative association with conductivity levels. Current management practices for garden ponds are highly variable, often focussed on individual ponds. Based on the findings of this study, we recommend that management should focus on making garden pond surface areas as large as possible, ensure that there is a wide variety of native aquatic plant species present and manage conductivity levels. Garden ponds likely comprise a significant component of the urban freshwater network, and considering their management at both local and landscape scales will ensure that biotic communities inhabiting urban landscapes can be more effectively supported.

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Published in

Insect Conservation and Diversity

Volume

17

Issue

2

Pages

374 - 385

Publisher

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Entomological Society

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Author(s)

Publisher statement

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acceptance date

2023-10-26

Publication date

2023-11-16

Copyright date

2023

ISSN

1752-458X

eISSN

1752-4598

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Paul Wood. Deposit date: 19 August 2024

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC