DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dv41ns255
title: Reclaiming urban vacant land to manage stormwater and support insect habitat

description: Urban green spaces can provide important wildlife habitat and ecosystem
 services. In legacy cities, built structures are demolished as populations
 dwindle, resulting in vacant land. Vacant land constitutes an opportunity
 to establish green infrastructure that provides multiple ecosystem
 services. Our objective was to determine whether establishing green
 infrastructure on vacant land to manage stormwater could provide insect
 habitat in the legacy city of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. Two green
 infrastructure treatments were implemented on vacant land in the historic
 Slavic Village neighborhood in 2014 and 2015: rain gardens (lower cost)
 and bioswales (higher cost). We hypothesized that rain gardens and
 bioswales would support more abundant, species rich insect communities
 compared to unaltered vacant lots. Wild bees (Hymenoptera: Aculeata) and
 lady beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), two insect groups of
 conservation concern, were sampled during the summer (June–August) from
 2014 to 2016 using pan traps and yellow sticky card traps. Local
 vegetation and temporal variables were measured. Generalized linear mixed
 effects models evaluated whether insect biodiversity varied with
 treatment, habitat variables, site, and time. We collected 3,004 bees from
 pan traps and 5,438 lady beetles from yellow sticky card traps during this
 study. Bee biodiversity was similar among treatments. In 2014, alien
 Coccinellidae abundance was higher in vacant lots compared to rain
 gardens. In 2015 and 2016, alien Coccinellidae were marginally more
 abundant in rain gardens compared to vacant lots and bioswales, while
 native Coccinellidae abundance was significantly higher in vacant lots. In
 the short term, establishing green infrastructure on vacant land can
 improve stormwater management without compromising the quality of vacant
 land as insect habitat.
description: Pan traps were set in 2014 (July 10, July 31), 2015 (June 9, July
 6, Aug 5), and 2016 (June 9, July 26, Aug 8) to sample bees. Pan traps
 consisted of 96 ml plastic soufflé bowls (Solo®) painted fluorescent blue,
 yellow, or left white. One pan trap of each color was filled halfway with
 soapy water (1% blue Dawn dish soap/water solution) and deployed at ground
 level for 24 h in each quadrat used for vegetation sampling. At the time
 of collection, the number of viable pan traps per site was recorded to
 account for trap loss during each sampling. All bees from pan traps were
 washed, blown dry, pinned, and preserved with museum level archival
 labels. Bees collected using pan traps were identified using
 Discoverlife.org (Ascher and Pickering 2017), revisions by Jason Gibbs for
 Lasioglossum (Gibbs 2011; Gibbs et al. 2013), and Bumble Bees of North
 America (Williams et al. 2014). Voucher specimen identifications were
 verified by Sam Droege at the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab in
 Laurel, Maryland and pinned bee specimens were deposited in the Museum of
 Biological Diversity in Columbus, Ohio. From the verified bee species
 data, total bee abundance, <em>Halictidae </em>abundance,
 <em>Lasioglossum </em>abundance, and native bee abundance were
 counted. Bee species richness and Shannon diversity were also calculated.
 Bycatch, including hoverflies (<em>Syrphidae</em>), longlegged
 flies (<em>Dolichopodidae</em>), minute pirate bugs
 (<em>Anthocoridae: Orius</em>), and rove beetles
 (<em>Staphylinidae</em>), were counted but not analyzed for
 the purposes of this study. To sample lady beetles (<em>Coleoptera:
 Coccinellidae</em>), Trece Pherocon ® Unbaited AM Yellow Sticky
 Traps (hereafter sticky traps) (23 cm W × 28 cm L with a 18 cm W × 23 cm L
 grid) were deployed for seven days at a time in 2014 (June 23, July 21),
 2015 (June 10, July 6, Aug 3), and 2016 (June 9, July 14, Aug 2). One
 sticky trap was set per quadrat and secured to a step-in fence post above
 maximum vegetation height. At the time of collection, the number of viable
 sticky traps per site was recorded. Lady beetles were counted and
 identified to species using a stereomicroscope (Spring 2017). Bees were
 also counted and identified on these sticky traps, but the majority were
 only identifiable to genus due to the adhesive obscuring diagnostic
 features in the abundant <em>Lasioglossum </em>and
 <em>Hylaeus </em>specimens. This adhesive also made it
 challenging to remove bees collected from sticky traps without damaging
 them, and as a result, these specimens were not archived. From the lady
 beetle species data, total lady beetle abundance, lady beetle abundance by
 subfamily, lady beetle abundance by species, alien lady beetle abundance,
 and native lady beetle abundance were calculated. Some sampling equipment
 (pan traps, sticky traps, stakes) was lost due to theft or destruction by
 mowing equipment. Sticky traps on fallen stakes were not included in
 sticky trap analyses. Some traps had obvious contamination from animal fur
 or feathers but were still included in the analyses since a large portion
 of the sticky surface was still viable. Pan traps were also occasionally
 knocked over or washed out due to high rainfall during the sampling
 period, and these traps were not included in the analyses.
description: # Reclaiming urban vacant land to manage stormwater and support insect
 habitat The dataset
 contents include count data, local vegetation variables, temporal
 variables, and site information. These data were used to create
 generalized linear models in R, using a backwards stepwise selection
 approach. ## Description of the data and file structure The Excel
 spreadsheets are databases containing information about insect taxa we
 collected as well as the local vegetation variables, while the CSV files
 include information about insect abundance and diversity. The CSV files
 were brought into R for analysis. The data is structured according to time
 of sampling, site, and quadrat. You will find in some sites, we only
 sampled insects and vegetation from 4 quadrats, whereas in others, we
 sampled from up to 6 quadrats. This was to account for variation in size,
 as well as variation in cover. For example, in the rain gardens, we placed
 additional sampling equipment in the mulched depression. Note that at the
 beginning of our analysis, we considered cover variables which were
 collected but ultimately decided to exclude them, as they did not fit our
 models well and were not strong predictors of insect abundance. Columns
 where variables are listed as NA indicate that either the information was
 not collected (e.g., cover or vegetation variables) or that sampling
 equipment was damaged and sampling effort was compromised (e.g., bee
 abundance, richness, diversity). Datasets include | compiledRG.csv |
 Information about sampling location and time (columns A-F), local
 vegetation (G-J), bee abundance, richness, and number of traps (K-O),
 percent cover in each quadrat (P-T, totaling to 100 per observation),
 number of sticky cards (U), and number of bees and lady beetles collected
 per sticky card (V-AE). This dataset was used to run GLMMs of bee
 abundance, bee richness, and lady beetle abundance. | '\_e'
 indicates alien abundance where as '\_n' indicates native
 abundance. '\_y' indicates a response variable was measured with
 sticky cards, while '\_b' indicates a response variable was
 collected using bee bowls. 'lasio' refers to the bee genus
 *Lasioglossum*, and 'halictidae' refers to the bee family
 Halictidae. P14 (column X) references the abundance *Propylea
 quatuordecimpunctata*. 'cocc' (AB-AD) indicates the subfamily
 Coccinellinae, while 'scym' indicates the subfamily Scymninae.
 All lady beetles were collected using sticky cards. | | :--------------- |
 :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | diversityRG.csv | Includes information about sampling location and time (columns A-G), number of bee bowls (H), number of bees collected (I), Shannon-Weiner diversity (J), and local vegetation variables (K-M). This dataset was used to run GLMMs of bee diversity. | | | nativeBeeRG.csv | Includes information about sampling location and time (columns A-E), native bee abundance (F), alien bee abundance (G), number of bee bowls (H), and local vegetation variables (I-K). This dataset was used to run GLMMs of native bee abundance and alien bee abundance. | | | nativeBeeRG.xslx | This file includes a database of bee species ID (compiledBeeID) which was used to derive metrics of bee abundance (abundance, abundanceFinal). | Under Species ID (B) in the sheet titled "abundance", NA indicates that no bees were collected during that observation period. Hence, there is no species to identify. | | predatorRG.xslx | This file includes more detailed response variables of insect predators that were not included in the final publication. This includes information about sampling location and time (columbs A-F), local vegetation variables (G-H), abundance of lacewings (I), assassin bugs (J), rove beetles (K), pirate bugs (L), hoverflies (M), longlegged flies (N), and lady beetles (O). Lady beetles are further broken down into different lady beetle species (P-AF). | *Propylea quatuordecimpunctata* (P), *Cycloneda munda* (Q), *Coleomegilla maculata* (R), *Scymnus* spp. (S), *Brachiacantha* spp. (T), small black unidentified lady beetles (U), *Hyperapsis undulata* (V), *Harmonia axyridis* (W), *Hippodamia parenthesis* (X), *Hippodamia variegata* (Y), unknown lady beetle (Z), *Psyllobora vigintimaculata* (AA), *Hippodamia convergens* (AB), *Epilachna varivestis* (AC), *Hyperapsis signata* (AD), *Coccinella septempunctata* (AE), and unknown lady beetle (AF). | ## Sharing/Access information N/A ## Code/Software We used R Studio to upload and run these files. The R Script is included here. The code is greatly informed by Zuur et al. 2009.