Diversity of Central European urban biota: effects of human-made habitat types on plants and land snails
Abstract
Urbanization is associated with strong changes in biodiversity, but the diversity of plant and animal assemblages varies among urban habitats. We studied effects of urban habitats on the diversity of vascular plants and land snails in 32 large cities.
Location Central Europe, Belgium and the Netherlands. Species composition of all vascular plants that had not been planted by humans, and all land snails, was recorded in seven 1-ha plots within each city.
Each plot contained one urban habitat type representing a different disturbance regime: historical city square, boulevard, residential area with compact building pattern, residential area with open building pattern, park, early successional and mid-successional site. For each plot, we obtained temperature and precipitation data.
The effects of climate and habitat types on species composition were quantified. Habitat type explained higher proportions of the total variation in both the plant and snail assemblages than did climate.