Species richness patterns and community structure of land snail communities along an urban-rural gradient in river floodplains (original) (raw)

may be illuminated through investigations of biotic and abiotic changes across urban-to-rural gradients (McDonnell et al. 1997; Niemelä 1999, 2000). Such gradients, from densely built city cores to increasingly rural surroundings, reflect diminishing intensities of human intervention on originally similar land bases. Such a gradient occurs worldwide and provides a useful framework for comparative work on a global scale, because it reflects similar anthropogenic patterns and processes (Niemelä 2000; Niemelä et al. 2002). Terrestrial gastropods are good subjects to study the impact of urbanisation, because organisms with low dispersal capabilities, like snails and slugs, are very susceptible to anthropogenic activities (Ström et al. 2009). Microsnails (< 5 mm in diameter), in particular, are often more vulnerable to disturbance because of their very limited mobility and dispersal and their strong dependence on microhabitats (Baur and Baur 1988). For these reasons, land-snail community composition, especially where microsnails are included, is a good indicator of the overall health of an ecosystem (Frest 2002). A review by Yanes (2012)

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