Miss Philippa Bell1, Dr. Georgia Garrard1, Professor Kirsten Parris1

1The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Biography:

Philippa is a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Melbourne, her research in urban ecology is aimed towards making our cities more liveable for both nature and people. She is currently investigating the effectiveness of nature strips for bee, beetle and butterfly habitat by planting gardens on nature strips in Melbourne’s north. She hopes to find ecological value in these novel green spaces and encourage others to take advantage of urban spaces for conservation.

Abstract:

Urbanisation is occurring at an extraordinary rate and scale and the associated habitat loss and fragmentation is considered a major threat to biodiversity, including insect diversity, worldwide. Nevertheless, the urban landscape is abundant in novel green spaces with the potential to contribute to conservation actions. This study focusses on nature strips, as they are an abundant and underutilised green space in Melbourne. Traditionally composed of lawn and a street tree, these spaces provide few resources to the insects that rely on a complex understory and/or shrubby vegetation for food, shelter and nesting habitat. While there is evidence that increasing habitat availability in more traditional urban greenspaces (e.g., parks or golf courses) can increase insect biodiversity, there has been little prior research on the biodiversity value of habitat additions on nature strips. Here we employed a paired Before-After-Control-Impact design to explore the value of nature-strip habitat gardens for bee, beetle and butterfly biodiversity. We recorded insect abundance and richness on 28 nature strips in the City of Merri-bek, half were transformed into habitat gardens (planted with a diversity of native plants for food and habitat) and all were surveyed again in the following year. On nature strips that received habitat gardens total insect abundance increased from 204 (before the intervention) to 655 (after the intervention) and total insect richness increased from 107 to 274 species, genera or groups. Our results indicate that habitat interventions on this scale may contribute to insect conservation efforts in urban areas.