Exoskeletons and economics:indoor arthropod diversity increases in affluent neighbourhoods

In urban ecosystems, socioeconomics contribute to patterns of biodiversity. The ‘luxury effect’, in which wealthier neighbourhoods are more biologically diverse, has been observed for plants, birds, bats and lizards. Here, we used data from a survey of indoor arthropod diversity (defined throughout as family-level richness) from 50 urban houses and found that house size, surrounding vegetation, as well as mean neighbourhood income best predict the number of kinds of arthropods found indoors. Our finding, that homes in wealthier neighbourhoods host higher indoor arthropod diversity (consisting of primarily non-pest species), shows that the luxury effect can extend to the indoor environment. The effect of mean neighbourhood income on indoor arthropod diversity was particularly strong for individual houses that lacked high surrounding vegetation ground cover, suggesting that neighbourhood dynamics can compensate for local choices of homeowners. Our work suggests that the management of neighbourhoods and cities can have effects on biodiversity that can extend from trees and birds all the way to the arthropod life in bedrooms and basements

The habitats humans provide:factors affecting the diversity and composition of arthropods in houses

Abstract The indoor biome is a novel habitat which recent studies have shown exhibit not only high microbial diversity, but also high arthropod diversity. Here, we analyze findings from a survey of 50 houses (southeastern USA) within the context of additional survey data concerning house and room features, along with resident behavior, to explore how arthropod diversity and community composition are influenced by physical aspects of rooms and their usage, as well as the lifestyles of human residents. We found that indoor arthropod diversity is strongly influenced by access to the outdoors and carpeted rooms hosted more types of arthropods than non-carpeted rooms. Arthropod communities were similar across most room types, but basements exhibited more unique community compositions. Resident behavior such as house tidiness, pesticide usage, and pet ownership showed no significant influence on arthropod community composition. Arthropod communities across all rooms in houses exhibit trophic structure—with both generalized predators and scavengers included in the most frequently found groups. These findings suggest that indoor arthropods serve as a connection to the outdoors, and that there is still much yet to be discovered about their impact on indoor health and the unique ecological dynamics within our homes

Arthropods of the great indoorssuburban homes:characterizing diversity inside urban and suburban homes

Although humans and arthropods have been living and evolving together for all of our history, we know very little about the arthropods we share our homes with apart from major pest groups. Here we surveyed, for the first time, the complete arthropod fauna of the indoor biome in 50 houses (located in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, USA). We discovered high diversity, with a conservative estimate range of 32–211 morphospecies, and 24–128 distinct arthropod families per house. The majority of this indoor diversity (73%) was made up of true flies (Diptera), spiders (Araneae), beetles (Coleoptera), and wasps and kin (Hymenoptera, especially ants: Formicidae). Much of the arthropod diversity within houses did not consist of synanthropic species, but instead included arthropods that were filtered from the surrounding landscape. As such, common pest species were found less frequently than benign species. Some of the most frequently found arthropods in houses, such as gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) and book lice (Liposcelididae), are unfamiliar to the general public despite their ubiquity. These findings present a new understanding of the diversity, prevalence, and distribution of the arthropods in our daily lives. Considering their impact as household pests, disease vectors, generators of allergens, and facilitators of the indoor microbiome, advancing our knowledge of the ecology and evolution of arthropods in homes has major economic and human health implications

The effect of habitual and experimental antiperspirant and deodorant product use on the armpit microbiome

An ever expanding body of research investigates the human microbiome in general and the skin microbiome in particular. Microbiomes vary greatly from individual to individual. Understanding the factors that account for this variation, however, has proven challenging, with many studies able to account statistically for just a small proportion of the inter-individual variation in the abundance, species richness or composition of bacteria. The human armpit has long been noted to host a high biomass bacterial community, and recent studies have highlighted substantial inter-individual variation in armpit bacteria, even relative to variation among individuals for other body habitats. One obvious potential explanation for this variation has to do with the use of personal hygiene products, particularly deodorants and antiperspirants. Here we experimentally manipulate product use to examine the abundance, species richness, and composition of bacterial communities that recolonize the armpits of people with different product use habits. In doing so, we find that when deodorant and antiperspirant use were stopped, culturable bacterial density increased and approached that found on individuals who regularly do not use any product. In addition, when antiperspirants were subsequently applied, bacterial density dramatically declined. These culture-based results are in line with sequence-based comparisons of the effects of long-term product use on bacterial species richness and composition. Sequence-based analyses suggested that individuals who habitually use antiperspirant tended to have a greater richness of bacterial OTUs in their armpits than those who use deodorant. In addition, individuals who used antiperspirants or deodorants long-term, but who stopped using product for two or more days as part of this study, had armpit communities dominated by Staphylococcaceae, whereas those of individuals in our study who habitually used no products were dominated by Corynebacterium. Collectively these results suggest a strong effect of product use on the bacterial composition of armpits. Although stopping the use of deodorant and antiperspirant similarly favors presence of Staphylococcaceae over Corynebacterium, their differential modes of action exert strikingly different effects on the richness of other bacteria living in armpit communities

Fauna in an abandoned landscape: Animal responses to tropical forest regeneration at multiple scales

The tropical forest landscape is rapidly being converted into a landscape dominated by agricultural lands and abandoned agricultural lands. Species that survive into the next century are likely to be those able to persist in agricultural habitat and young forest recovering from use. I explore the dynamics of the relationship between forest disturbance, and regeneration and tropical faunal communities, particularly those of ants, butterflies, and birds. I examine trends in species abundance and distribution at both local scales (at field sites in Bolivia, Costa Rica and Peru) and at larger continental scales. Finally, I use information gathered about the geographic ranges of species to construct null models for the richness patterns of New World tropical faunal species, and how such knowledge might be used predict both regional and global diversity and future transitions in species composition and distribution.