Foodweb biodiversity and community structure in urban waterbodies vary with habitat complexity, macrophyte cover, and trophic status.

Urban ecology is a promising research field in limnology, but we still need to evaluate how urban waterbodies can sustain biodiversity. In this paper, we present a comprehensive foodweb perspective of urban waterbodies in the city of Montréal (Québec, Canada). The research goals are to evaluate if biodiversity and community structure of foodweb components (phytoplankton, zooplankton, and macroinvertebrates) are valuable tools for assessing the ecological status of urban waterbodies and examine how they are controlled by multiple factors related to trophic status and habitat complexity (origin, water residence, macrophyte cover, fish, and management practices). Multiple factor analysis, correlations, and non-parametric tests were used to examine the relationships between the environmental factors and foodweb biological variables. Our case study confirms that urban waterbodies are important sources of biodiversity and reveals that foodweb-based biological indicators are reliable tools for the biomonitoring of urban waterbodies. Foodweb biodiversity and community structure were more influenced by habitat complexity than by trophic status. The key determinants of variation were the differences in water regime, management of temporary and permanent waterbodies, and contrasts in habitat complexity depending on pond origin (artificial or natural) and macrophyte cover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]