Butterfly Communities Vary under Different Urbanization Types in City Parks

Ying Lin; Shanjun Huang; Wenqiang Fang; Yujie Zhao; Ziluo Huang; Ruoxian Zheng; Jingkai Huang; Jiaying Dong; Weicong Fu

doi:10.3390/ani13111775

Butterfly Communities Vary under Different Urbanization Types in City Parks

Animals (Basel). 2023 May 26;13(11):1775. doi: 10.3390/ani13111775.

Authors

Ying Lin¹, Shanjun Huang¹, Wenqiang Fang¹, Yujie Zhao¹, Ziluo Huang¹, Ruoxian Zheng¹, Jingkai Huang¹, Jiaying Dong², Weicong Fu^{1

3

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Affiliations

¹ College of Landscape Architecture, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, 15 Shangxiadian Road, Fuzhou 350002, China.
² School of Architecture, Clemson University, 105 Sikes Hall, Clemson, SC 29634, USA.
³ Engineering Research Center for Forest Park of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Fuzhou 350002, China.
⁴ Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.

Abstract

Butterflies are key indicators of urban biodiversity and one of the most vulnerable organism groups to environmental changes. Studying how butterflies are distributed and what factors might influence them in urban green spaces is crucial. In this study, from July 2022 to September 2022, we examined and analyzed the butterfly diversity in nine parks in Fuzhou, China, along three different levels of urbanization (urban, peri-urban, and suburban). We investigated how butterfly communities respond to increasing urbanization. The findings revealed that: (1) A total of 427 butterfly individuals from 4 families and 13 species were observed; (2) Shannon diversity, richness, and abundance of the overall butterfly community were lower in the more urbanized parks. Urbanization had significant effects on Shannon diversity (p = 0.003) and abundance (p = 0.007) but no significant effects on the whole butterfly community richness (p = 0.241); (3) non-metric multidimensional scaling revealed that there were differences in the overall number of butterfly species in urban parks among different geographic regions.

Keywords: biodiversity; butterfly distribution; urban parks; urbanization.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by (1) Green Urbanization across China and Europe: Collaborative Research on Key technological Advances in Urban Forests: 2021YFE0193200; (2) Horizon 2020 strategic plan: CLEARING HOUSE—Collaborative Learning in Research, Information-sharing, and Governance on How Urban tree-based solutions support Sino-European urban futures, grant number 821242; (3) National Non-Profit Research Institutions of the Chinese Academy of Forestry [grant numbers: CAFYBB2020ZB008].