Orthoptera Colonising the Urban Landscape and Urban Lawns: A Case of a Middle-Russian City

Abstract

Orthoptera are often surveyed in research on urban environments, but results are ambiguous in different regions and cities. We studied the insects in a city located in the centre of the East-European plain, at the junction of the Continental and Boreal biogeoregions. We distinguished suburbs and the urban landscape and meadows and lawns within the urban landscape. To find orthopterans in grassland habitats, we used sweepnet, acoustic and visual observations, and pitfall traps. Urban habitats are colonised by 20 species of Orthoptera from 29 species observed in the suburbs. Only five species are as frequent in urban habitats as in suburban ones. The urban environment negatively affects both forest species, all three species of dry meadows and only one of ten grassland generalists. On lawns, we found 11 species. Total abundance and species numbers were lower in lawns than in meadows. Only three late-emerging and high-dispersing species were quite frequent in lawns. The occurrence of Conocephalus fuscus in lawns was positively influenced by the presence of uncut patches, Chorthippus dorsatus—by the density of the herb layer. Ch. mollis, which is native to dry meadows, preferred unshaded lawns. Chorthippus biguttulus is a single species inhabiting lawns of almost every quality.

Keywords

Urban environment / Grasshoppers / Katydids / Mowing / Meadow / Dispersal ability / Habitat preference / Layer preference

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Dmitry Gusarov, Polina Shmeleva, Artem Markov and other students of the Regional ecobiological centre who helped me to collect the insects.

Ethics Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Research data are available in the datasets [52,53].

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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