Intraspecific variation shapes community-level behavioural responses to urbanisation in spiders: from traits to function

Abstract

O_LIApproaches based on functional traits have proven especially valuable to understand how communities respond to environmental gradients. Until recently, they have, however, often ignored the potential consequences of intraspecific trait variation (ITV). This position becomes potentially more problematic when studying animals and behavioural traits, as behaviours can be altered very flexibly at the individual level to track environmental changes.\nC_LIO_LIUrban areas are an extreme example of human-changed environments, exposing organisms to multiple, strong, yet relatively standardized, selection pressures. Adaptive behavioural responses are thought to play a major role in animals success or failure in these new environments. The consequences of such behavioural changes for ecosystem processes remain understudied.\nC_LIO_LIUsing 62 sites of varying urbanisation level, we investigated how species turnover and ITV influenced community-level behavioural responses to urbanisation, using orb web spiders and their webs as models of foraging behaviour.\nC_LIO_LIITV explained around 30% of the total trait variation observed among communities. Spiders altered their web-building behaviour in cities in ways that increase the capture efficiency of webs. These traits shifts were partly mediated by species turnover, but ITV increased their magnitude. The importance of ITV varied depending on traits and on the spatial scale at which urbanisation was considered. Available prey biomass decreased with urbanisation; the corresponding decrease in prey interception by spiders was less important when ITV in web traits was accounted for.\nC_LIO_LIBy facilitating trait-environment matching despite urbanisation, ITV thus helps communities to buffer the effects of environmental changes on ecosystem functioning. Despite being often neglected from community-level analyses, our results highlight the importance of accounting for intraspecific trait variation to fully understand trait responses to (human-induced) environmental changes and their impact on ecosystem functioning.\nC_LI