From the forest to the city: the persistence of dragonflies and damselflies in the urban jungle

Abstract

Urbanization has driven one of the most substantial transformations in water bodies exposing groups such as aquatic insects to new challenging conditions. Some odonate (dragonflies and damselflies) species persist in these transformed environments, but it remains unclear which morphological or behavioral traits allow them to survive. Through a bibliographical review we identified 88 urbanization-tolerant and 87 urbanization-sensitive odonate species worldwide. We searched morphological and behavioral traits and used phylogenetic path analysis for Anisoptera and Zygoptera to test which traits make species more sensitive to urban environments. Our results show that habitat preference was not linked with the sensitivity to urbanization whereas larger species with weak sexual dimorphism stood out as consistently associated with sensitivity to urban environments. For dragonflies, species with yellow to red colorations tend to be less sensitive to urban areas while for damselflies, territorial species tend to be less sensitive to urban areas. We discuss the underlying mechanisms linked to such urban-surviving ability as well as how we can use such information for conservation purposes.