Botanical Gardens Are Local Hotspots for Urban Butterflies in Arid Environments.

ABSTRACT: Urban areas are proliferating quickly around the globe often with detrimental impacts on biodiversity. Insects, especially pollinators, have also seen record declines in recent decades, sometimes associated with land use change such as urbanization, but also associated with climate changes such as increased aridity. How these various factors play out in attracting and sustaining species richness in a complex urban matrix is poorly understood. Urban botanical gardens may serve as important refugia for insect pollinators in arid regions due to reliable water availability for both plants and insects. Here, we use community science data on butterfly observations to evaluate if botanical gardens can be hotspots of biodiversity in the arid urban landscapes of the southwest US. We found butterfly

SUBMITTER: Prudic KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9604306 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature