Urban forests sustain diverse carrion beetle assemblages in the New York City metropolitan area.

ABSTRACT: Urbanization is an increasingly pervasive form of land transformation that reduces biodiversity of many taxonomic groups. Beetles exhibit a broad range of responses to urbanization, likely due to the high functional diversity in this order. Carrion beetles (Order: Coleoptera, Family: Silphidae) provide an important ecosystem service by promoting decomposition of small-bodied carcasses, and have previously been found to decline due to forest fragmentation caused by urbanization. However, New York City (NYC) and many other cities have fairly large continuous forest patches that support dense populations of small mammals, and thus may harbor relatively robust carrion beetle communities in city parks. In this study, we investigated carrion beetle community composition, abundance and diversity

SUBMITTER: Fusco NA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5356479 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature