D3095: Investigating freshwater insect biodiversity in urban stormwater ponds in the greater Toronto area

As the number of natural wetlands decline in urban areas, constructed ponds may provide a refuge for biodiversity. Stormwater management ponds, in particular, play a critical role in collecting excess rainfall and pollutants, reducing flooding, and filtering the surrounding environment. These ponds may also provide discrete habitat for aquatic biodiversity despite not being constructed for that primary purpose. Using a combination of field surveys of stormwater ponds in the Greater Toronto Area, I am investigating whether there are predictable associations between aquatic insect community composition, local environmental stressors, and species dispersal and life history traits. Aquatic macroinvertebrates communities were sampled and specific focus will be placed on species identification and functional trait composition analysis within the suborder Heteroptera, by examining morphological traits associated with dispersal and life history. This insect assemblage is an ecologically important, highly dispersive, and diverse suborder present in stormwater ponds, making them a useful group to examine community responses to human-induced environmental change in urban lentic environments. Using pond-specific environmental data as well as regional landscape data, I will determine how urban environmental stressors impact community composition in these constructed urban ponds. Here, I test the hypothesis that urbanization leads to shifts in community composition and/or traits affecting dispersal and local performance in an actively dispersing insect assemblage. This work aims to provide insight into better management of urban constructed ponds and help determine whether these systems primarily engineered for urban flooding control and water quality control have ecological conservation value with respect to freshwater biodiversity.