Relationships between traits of organisms and the structure of their metacommunities have so far mainly been explored with meta-analyses. We compared metacommunities of a wide variety of aquatic organism groups (12 groups, ranging from bacteria to fish) in the same set of 99 ponds to minimise biases inherent to meta-analyses. In the category of passive dispersers, large-bodied groups showed stronger spatial patterning than small-bodied groups suggesting an increasing impact of dispersal limitation with increasing body size. Metacommunities of organisms with the ability to fly (i.e. insect groups) showed a weaker imprint of dispersal limitation than passive dispersers with similar body size. In contrast, dispersal movements of vertebrate groups (fish and amphibians) seemed to be mainly confined to local connectivity patterns. Our results reveal that body size and dispersal mode are important drivers of metacommunity structure and these traits should therefore be considered when developing a predictive framework for metacommunity dynamics.

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The increasing urbanization process is hypothesized to drastically alter (semi‐)natural environments with a concomitant major decline in species abundance and diversity. Yet, studies on this effect of urbanization, and the spatial scale at which it acts, are at present inconclusive due to the large heterogeneity in taxonomic groups and spatial scales at which this relationship has been investigated among studies. Comprehensive studies analysing this relationship across multiple animal groups and at multiple spatial scales are rare, hampering the assessment of how biodiversity generally responds to urbanization. We studied aquatic (cladocerans), limno‐terrestrial (bdelloid rotifers) and terrestrial (butterflies, ground beetles, ground‐ and web spiders, macro‐moths, orthopterans and snails) invertebrate groups using a hierarchical spatial design, wherein three local‐scale (200 m × 200 m) urbanization levels were repeatedly sampled across three landscape‐scale (3 km × 3 km) urbanization levels. We tested for local and landscape urbanization effects on abundance and species richness of each group, whereby total richness was partitioned into the average richness of local communities and the richness due to variation among local communities. Abundances of the terrestrial active dispersers declined in response to local urbanization, with reductions up to 85% for butterflies, while passive dispersers did not show any clear trend. Species richness also declined with increasing levels of urbanization, but responses were highly heterogeneous among the different groups with respect to the richness component and the spatial scale at which urbanization impacts richness. Depending on the group, species richness declined due to biotic homogenization and/or local species loss. This resulted in an overall decrease in total richness across groups in urban areas. These results provide strong support to the general negative impact of urbanization on abundance and species richness within habitat patches and highlight the importance of considering multiple spatial scales and taxa to assess the impacts of urbanization on biodiversity.

Summary 1.A safe, clean water supply is critical for sustaining many important ecosystem services provided by freshwaters. The development of cyanobacterial blooms in lakes and reservoirs has a major impact on the provision of these services, particularly limiting their use for recreation and water supply for drinking and spray irrigation. Nutrient enrichment is thought to be the most important pressure responsible for the widespread increase in cyanobacterial blooms in recent decades. Quantifying how nutrients limit cyanobacterial abundance in lakes is, therefore, a key need for setting robust targets for the management of freshwaters. 2. Using a data set from over 800 European lakes, we highlight the use of quantile regression modelling for understanding the maximum potential capacity of cyanobacteria in relation to total phosphorus (TP) and the use of a range of quantile responses, alongside World Health Organisation (WHO) health alert thresholds for recreational waters, for setting robust phosphorus targets for lake management in relation to water use. 3. The analysis shows that cyanobacteria exhibit a nonlinear response to phosphorus with the sharpest increase in cyanobacterial abundance occurring in the TP range from about 20 lg L À1 up to about 100 lg L À1 .4. The likelihood of exceeding the World Health Organisation (WHO) 'low health alert' threshold increases from about 5% exceedance at 16 lg L À1 to 40% exceedance at 54 lg L À1 . About 50% of the studied lakes remain below this WHO health alert threshold, irrespective of high summer TP concentrations, highlighting the importance of other factors affecting cyanobacteria population growth and loss processes, such as high flushing rate. 5. Synthesis and applications. Developing a more quantitative understanding of the effect of nutrients on cyanobacterial abundance in freshwater lakes provides important knowledge for restoring and sustaining a safe, clean water supply for multiple uses. Our models can be used to set nutrient targets to sustain recreational services and provide different levels of precaution that can be chosen dependent on the importance of the service provision.Key-words: algal bloom, blue-green algae, ecosystem services, freshwater, lake, nutrient, quantile regression, WHO *Correspondence author. E-mail: laca@ceh.ac.uk † On secondment from CEH 2 to JRC 1 .