Urbanization is a key contributor to biodiversity loss, but evidence is mounting that cities can support rich arthropod communities, including rare and threatened species. Furthermore, greenspace is growing within hundreds of “shrinking cities” that have lost population resulting in a need to demolish an overabundance of infrastructure creating vacant land. Efforts are underway to transform vacant lots, often viewed as blighted areas, into habitats that promote biodiversity and generate ecosystem services, such as urban agroecosystems. To understand how reconfiguring these greenspaces might influence species conservation, elucidation of the factors that drive the distribution of an urban species pool is needed. In particular, the importance of species interactions in structuring urban communities is poorly understood. We tested hypotheses that (1) greater breadth of prey captured by web‐building spiders and reduced overlap of prey capture among individuals facilitates the conservation of genera richness and abundance and (2) heterogeneity within a greenspace patch facilitates enhanced dietary niche breadth and greater resource partitioning. In 2013 and 2014, the abundance, breadth and degree of overlap in prey capture of sheet web spiders (Linyphiidae) was measured using web mimic traps at 160 microsites (0.25 m²) situated in four urban vacant lots and four urban farms in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Within a subset of 40 microsites, we used vacuum sampling and hand collection to measure the abundance and genera richness of Linyphiidae. Spider richness and abundance were significantly reduced within urban farms relative to vacant lots. The distribution of spiders and prey was explained by habitat structure, with microsites dominated by tall grasses and flowering plants, with a high bloom abundance and richness, supporting greater prey capture and a higher genera richness and abundance of spiders. In 2014, web capture overlap was significantly greater within microsites dominated by bare ground. These findings illustrate that urban greenspace conservation efforts that focus on reducing bare ground and incorporating a diversity of grasses and flowering plant species can promote linyphiid spiders, potentially by relaxing exploitative competition for shared prey.

中文翻译：

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丰富和丰富的蜘蛛群落源于网络捕获宽度的增加和城市绿地重叠的减少

城市化是造成生物多样性丧失的关键因素，但是越来越多的证据表明，城市可以支持丰富的节肢动物群落，包括稀有和受威胁的物种。此外，在失去人口的数百个“萎缩城市”中，绿色空间正在增长，因此需要拆除过多的基础设施，从而创造出空地。正在努力将通常被视为荒芜地区的空地转变成可促进生物多样性并提供生态系统服务的生境，例如城市农业生态系统。为了了解重新配置这些绿色空间可能如何影响物种保护，需要阐明驱动城市物种库分布的因素。尤其是，人们很少了解物种相互作用在构建城市社区中的重要性。我们测试了以下假设：（1）通过网络构建的蜘蛛捕获的猎物的广度更大，个体之间捕获的猎物的重叠减少，有利于保护属丰富度和丰富度；（2）绿地中的异质性有助于增强饮食的利基广度和增加资源分区。在2013年和2014年，使用网状模仿诱捕器在160个微地点（0.25 m^2个）位于美国俄亥俄州克利夫兰市的四个城市空地和四个城市农场中。在40个微站点的子集中，我们使用了真空采样和人工收集来测量Linyphiidae的丰度和属丰富度。相对于空地，城市农场内蜘蛛的丰富度和丰度显着降低。蜘蛛和猎物的分布可以通过栖息地结构来解释，其中以高草和开花植物为主的微场所具有较高的开花丰度和丰富度，支持了更大的猎物捕获和更高的蜘蛛丰富度和丰富度。2014年，在以裸露土地为主的微型网站中，网页捕获重叠现象明显增多。