Urban bird predation on horse chestnut leaf miner Cameraria ohridella in three Swiss cities

Description

We established our study sites in the cities of Basel, Lugano and Zurich. We characterised urban tree cover of each city using a rectangular grid with squares of 100x100 m. Within each square, we measured the area covered by urban trees using the European Union's Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information, Urban Atlas Street Tree Layer 2018 https://doi.org/10.2909/205691b3-7ae9-41dd-abf1-1fbf60d72c8c.

Then we assigned each square to three categories of urban tree cover that roughly represented the main types of urban uses:

1. low cover, industrial/commercial areas, 0-20% tree cover;
2. intermediate cover, residential areas, 20-40% tree cover;
3. high cover, urban parks and cemeteries, 40-60% tree cover.

We measured bird predation rate on the non-native insect larvae of the horse chestnut leaf miner (HCLM) Cameraria ohridella, an invasive moth that lays eggs and completes its larval and pupal development stages within the leaves of the horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanus. The larvae feed on leaf fluids and tissue while creating mines within the leaf, which ultimately results in early leaf browning and loss of photosynthetic activity. We collected roughly ten twigs from each tree, including five twigs from the inner and five from the outer crown. Each twig carried 2-4 leaves, for a total of 3408 leaflets. Leaves were stored for ~10 weeks in a refrigerated room at 4 degrees C. We checked all HCLM mines using a stereo microscope and distinguished among open and close mines. Open mines were further divided based on the opening hole, whether it was a small round exit hole of the larva or the parasitoid, or an irregularly shaped, large bird predation hole.