Abstract
Insect pollinators are essential for the health and resilience of
terrestrial ecosystems, delivering key ecosystem services in the face of
anthropogenic disturbance. Urbanisation may be a key threat to
pollinator diversity and abundance. However, the scale of the threat
remains unknown due to an overwhelming research emphasis on bees and a
lack of comparative studies of hyper-diverse taxa such as nocturnal
moths. Consequently, the question of which pollinator groups will be
more affected by urbanisation remains unknown, and the habitat features
that support key taxa remain controversial. We conducted the first
large-scale assessment of the negative effects of increasing
urbanisation on the diversity of bee, hoverfly and nocturnal moths
across three cities. We report up to a 43% reduction in species
richness along replicated urbanisation gradients, suggesting that a wide
range of pollinators are limited due to abiotic stresses and limited
resources in urban environments. Landscape mapping indicated that these
effects are driven by the reduction of tree cover and semi-natural
habitat; however, the specific landscape drivers were taxon-specific,
suggesting that urban insect conservation depends on the preservation or
expansion of habitat features specific to different threatened taxa. In
the first empirical comparison of three major pollinator taxa, we show
that, relative to bees, moths and hoverflies are particularly sensitive
to urbanisation, and we highlight the importance of including these
frequently overlooked pollinator groups when assessing the biodiversity
impacts of environmental change.