Urbanization has significantly increased globally during the last century and has far-reaching consequences for biodiversity and their associated habitats, particularly wetland ecosystems. Previous studies have focused primarily on wetlands in non-urban areas, and urban wetland biodiversity patterns are currently not well understood, particularly across Africa. Here, we investigate two highly transformed urban wetlands in Cape Town, South Africa, and determine the relative importance and influence of local environmental variables as drivers of macroinvertebrate richness and community structuring. We also determine the influence of local environmental variables for patterns of species turnover and nestedness within and among these wetlands, and provide management recommendations based on our findings. We found that few macroinvertebrate species were associated with these wetlands, yet community variation was driven by a combination of local environmental variables. Our results also indicate that the turnover component of beta diversity, rather than nestedness, was responsible for most of the variation in the overall macroinvertebrate community. We identified two major problems regarding the current ecological state of the investigated wetlands. Firstly, high nutrient loads originating from the surrounding land uses which reduced wetland biodiversity, and secondly, the transformation of these wetlands from seasonal to perennial water bodies. We recommend local and regional scale approaches to limit urban waste from entering these systems, and management of water levels simulating natural Mediterranean-type climate dynamics more closely are required to ensure that the maximum possible diversity can be supported in these wetlands.

上个世纪以来，全球城市化进程显着增加，对生物多样性及其相关生境，尤其是湿地生态系统产生了深远的影响。先前的研究主要集中在非城市地区的湿地上，而目前对城市湿地生物多样性的模式知之甚少，尤其是在整个非洲。在这里，我们调查了南非开普敦的两个高度转型的城市湿地，并确定了当地环境变量作为无脊椎动物丰富度和社区结构驱动力的相对重要性和影响。我们还确定了当地环境变量对这些湿地内部和之中的物种更新和嵌套模式的影响，并根据我们的发现提供管理建议。我们发现很少有大型无脊椎动物与这些湿地相关，但群落变化是由局部环境变量共同驱动的。我们的结果还表明，β多样性而不是嵌套性的营业额是造成整个大型无脊椎动物群落变化的主要原因。我们确定了有关调查湿地当前生态状况的两个主要问题。首先，来自周围土地利用的高养分负荷减少了湿地生物多样性，其次，这些湿地从季节性水体转变为多年生水体。我们建议采用本地和区域规模的方法来限制城市废物进入这些系统，