Arthropod communities and their ecosystem services on farms across an urbanization gradient

Urban agriculture (UA) has become an increasingly popular form of urban greenspace and is praised for its multiple use capacity. These spaces provide locally grown produce, opportunities for community engagement and education, and can act as harbors of biodiversity within urban matrices. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity urban farms are capable of sustaining, and how these farms measure up to more natural habitats, like prairies. There also is not much research that quantifies arthropod-mediated ecosystem services in UA and compares them across a gradient of urbanization. The objective of this study is to examine how the arthropod communities found on urban market farms and gardens compare to their rural counterparts and to restored prairies. Insects were surveyed on farms and restored prairies across a gradient of urbanization, and arthropod diversity, abundance, and ecosystem services provided (including pollination, decomposition, and pest suppression) were compared. A variety of collection methods were used, including pitfall traps, yellow sticky traps, timed floral observations, and sweep netting to provide a broader picture of the insect community as a whole. We hypothesize that restored prairies will provide the most ecosystem services and have the greatest arthropod diversity and abundance, followed by rural market farms, and then urban farms. In a preliminary study, we found that arthropod abundance across an urbanization gradient varies by taxonomic group. Ground-dwelling arthropods were more abundant on urban farms, but floral-visiting arthropods were more abundant on rural farms