Global insect declines? Assessing the resilience of urban insects.

The majority of the UK population currently resides in towns and cities. As the global population continues to grow and more people move from the rural landscape to urban areas, the conversion of natural habitats into urban land is projected to continue into the coming decades. Urbanisation presents a range of challenges for biodiversity, including habitat loss and fragmentation, the urban heat island effect, and pollution. Insects are a near-ubiquitous taxon in terrestrial ecosystems, critical for facilitating many ecosystem processes, yet little is known about how resilient different insect taxa are to urbanisation. It is therefore important to assess which insects are more resilient to urbanisation and identify the traits that facilitate persistence in urbanised landscapes, and to quantify the impacts of urbanisation on insect ecology and ecosystem processes. Improving our understanding of these issues is crucial for informing management decisions of urban areas to address the decline of less resilient insects and enhance the ecosystem functioning of urban green spaces. My research aims to assess the resilience of urban insects by quantifying trends in insect traits, diet and ecosystem processes along an urban-rural gradient.