Abstract: Lingang New Town is a rapidly developing coastal zone in Shanghai metropolitan region. To understand the characteristics of the riparian insect communities in the zone under effects of urbanization, an investigation was conducted in different habitats and seasons from October 2009 to September 2010. A total of 7755 insect individuals were collected, belonging to 199 species, 84 families, and 13 orders. Hemiptera, Diptera, and Hymenoptera were the dominant groups, occupying 37.7%, 23.5%, and 16.5%, respectively. 11.2% of the individuals were of aquatic insects, and occupied a small portion (12.1%) of the total species. The species diversity was the highest in plantation, with a Shannon diversity index value of 1.73, followed by in secondary forest (1.69), green land (1.48), wasteland (1.46), and farmland (1.42). Seasonal variation and habitat type had great effects on the insect individual number, species number, abundance, and evenness. According to the feeding behavior, the riparian insects could be classified into 6 kinds,i.e., herbivorous, predacious, parasitic, saprophagous, flowervisiting, and polyphagous, among which, herbivorous insects were predominant in both total species number (62.8%) and total individual number (55.5%). The lower proportions of the other feeding insects could be resulted from the human disturbances and the replacement of native vegetation in the riparian zone.

Key words: long-scale, land use pattern, landscape index, Ejin Delta.