Management of urban wetlands for conservation can reduce aquatic biodiversity and increase mosquito risk

1. Global wetland loss means constructed urban wetlands are an increasingly valuable resource for conservation. However, priorities for managing urban wetlands for conservation are often seen to conflict with management to reduce potential mosquito risks. Understanding the ecological and public health consequences of wetland management practices is vital to maximise the conservation value of urban wetlands without negatively impacting public health, however are often untested.

2. We conducted a landscape-scale experiment to test the ecological impacts of an existing urban wetland management regime, in which a group of urban wetlands are drained annually to reduce the abundance of an invasive fish Gambusia holbrooki, and then refilled to provide breeding habitat for a threatened frog Litoria aurea. We collected and compared aquatic macroinvertebrates and mosquito larvae from these refilled wetlands, and adjacent undrained wetlands, as well as sampling adult mosquito populations on fou...