Urbanization and Invertebrates: Diversity, Function, Adaptations and Evolution

Urbanization is one of the most pervasive and rapidly expanding forms of global land-use change, fundamentally altering habitat structure, microclimatic conditions, biotic interactions, and resource availability across terrestrial ecosystem. The responses of invertebrate taxa—which constitute the vast majority of animal diversity and underpin critical ecosystem functions such as decomposition, pollination, nutrient cycling, and trophic energy transfer—remain comparatively understudied and poorly integrated into urban ecological theory. Invertebrates exhibit extraordinary diversity in their life histories, dispersal capacities, and physiological tolerances, resulting in highly variable and context-dependent responses to urban environmental gradients. Some taxa demonstrate remarkable adaptive capacity, exploiting novel urban niches and thriving in anthropogenic habitats, while others experience population declines, range contractions, and functional disruption due to habitat fragmentation, pollution, artificial light and noise, altered thermal regimes, and biotic homogenization.

The Research Topic aims to advance our understanding of how urbanization shapes invertebrate communities, populations, and individual-level traits, and how these changes cascade to affect ecosystem processes and services in human-dominated landscapes. This Research Topic seeks to synthesize cutting-edge research that bridges urban ecology, evolutionary biology, community ecology, and conservation science. We particularly encourage studies that employ comparative, multi-city, or experimental approaches, as well as those that integrate invertebrate ecology with broader socio-ecological frameworks.

We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
• community assembly and biodiversity patterns of invertebrates along urban-rural gradients and across cities of varying size, age, and geographic context;
• trait-based approaches to predicting invertebrate responses to urban environmental filtering;
• population genetic and evolutionary consequences of urbanization, including adaptation, local maladaptation, and genetic erosion;
• effects of urban habitat fragmentation, connectivity, and matrix quality on invertebrate population dynamics and dispersal behavior;
• impacts of urban pollutants, artificial light at night, noise, and heat islands on invertebrate physiology, behavior, and life-history strategies;
• trophic network alterations and functional consequences of invertebrate community changes in urban ecosystems;
• the role of urban green infrastructure, such as parks, residential communities, green roofs, roadside vegetation, and remnant habitats, in sustaining invertebrate diversity and ecological functions;
• temporal dynamics and long-term monitoring of invertebrate responses to ongoing urban expansion and intensification;
• conservation and restoration strategies for maintaining invertebrate-mediated ecosystem services in cities.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: invertebrate diversity, functional traits, anthropogenic disturbance, habitat fragmentation, urban biodiversity conservation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.