Ground Arthropod Diversity at North Desert Village

While many studies have shown that urbanization and land-use type significantly impact species richness and evenness, few studies have investigated the mechanisms by which these changes occur. A residential neighborhood at ASU-Polytechnic Campus has been designed with 4 different neighborhood landscape regimes and provides the ideal opportunity to explore how local neighborhood landscaping affects biodiversity and food web structure and function of arthropod communities. Species richness, abundance and evenness were compared for ground dwelling arthropods before and after the installation of the North Desert Village (NDV) landscape treatments. This study can provide insights and understanding into the fundamental processes of how local landscaping practices alter diversity, relative abundances, and trophic structure of biological communities.