The expansion of urban areas is one of the most significant anthropogenic impacts on the natural landscape. Due to their sensitivity to stressors in both aquatic and terrestrial habitats, dragonflies and damselflies (the Odonata) may provide insights into the effects of urbanisation on biodiversity. However, while knowledge about the impacts of urbanisation on odonates is growing, there has not been a comprehensive review of this body of literature until now. This is the first systematic literature review conducted to evaluate both the quantity and topics of research conducted on odonates in urban ecosystems. From this research, 79 peer-reviewed papers were identified, the vast majority (89.87%) of which related to studies of changing patterns of biodiversity in urban odonate communities. From the papers regarding biodiversity changes, 31 were performed in an urban-rural gradient and 21 of these reported lower diversity towards built up city cores. Twelve of the cases of biodiversity loss were directly related to the concentrations of pollutants in the water. Other studies found higher concentrations of pollutants in odonates from built-up catchments and suggested that odonates such as Aeshna juncea and Platycnemis pennipes may be candidate indicators for particular contaminants. We conclude by identifying current research needs, which include the need for more studies regarding behavioural ecology and life-history traits in response to urbanisation, and a need to investigate the mechanisms behind diversity trends beyond pollution., Giovanna Villalobos-Jiménez, Alison M. Dunn, Christopher Hassall., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Geographic range expansion is one of the best documented macroecological consequences of climate change. A concomitant change in morphology has been demonstrated in some species. The relationship between latitudinal variation in morphology (e.g. Bergmann's rule) and the morphological consequences of microevolutionary pressures at expanding range margins have received little attention in the literature. Here we compare morphology of males of two Palaearctic damselfly (Odonata: Zygoptera) species, Coenagrion puella (Linnaeus, 1758) and Pyrrhosoma nymphula (Sulzer, 1776). C. puella has recently expanded its range from the north of England into Scotland. P. nymphula does not exhibit a range margin in the United Kingdom and has established populations in northern Scotland. We demonstrate evidence for spatially correlated variation in body size across the sampling sites between the two species but a deviation in patterns of dispersal-related morphology. P. nymphula exhibited very weak relationships between dispersal-related morphology (wing loading and thorax : abdomen mass ratio) and latitude. However, the more southerly-distributed C. puella exhibited strong relationships between mass investment in dispersal-related morphology and latitude. These trends appear to indicate compensatory growth patterns in cooler environments like those demonstrated for other species. The limits of this compensation for conditions that are close to the limits of a species' tolerance may contribute to the determination of the range margin. Greater variation in morphology towards the range margin has been observed in previous studies in Odonata. As such, the location of the sampling sites relative to the range margin of each species (closer in C. puella than P. nymphula) is highlighted as a potential contributing factor to the variation observed.