The functional diversity of urban ground arthropods in Prince George, British Columbia

Urbanization affects arthropod provisioning of ecosystem services such as pest control and pollination. Understanding shifts in arthropod assemblages informs land management decisions for improving urban ecosystem function. In previous research in Prince George, British Columbia, we found that residential and industrial sites had higher species richness than greenbelt sites, though these differences were not significant. Using linear regression and GIS data, we modelled whether total vegetation, and the area of different vegetation types (trees, grass, shrubs, and gardens), of hard surfaces (pavement and gravel), or of buildings predicted diversity at different sites based on geospatial data collected within 50, 25, and 10 meters of a sampling area. Only the total area of grass was a strong and significant predictor of species richness, but only at a 10-meter scale. In current work, we are studying shifts in functional diversity in different urban habitats, and whether some habitats filter traits like high mobility, small body-size, and generalist feeding habits. Industrial areas have less vegetation and fewer vegetative resources, and we expected them to have lower functional diversity and to filter for traits often found in urban insects. We sorted specimens into six functional guilds: herbivores, detritivores, fungivores, pollinators, predators/parasitoids, and honeydew feeders, ranking each taxon as having a strong, moderate, weak, or no affinity to each guild. We measured functional diversity using FRic index from 2010 Laliberté and Legendre’s FD package. Functional diversity did not differ significantly between land use types.