The contribution of urban greenspaces to support biodiversity and provide benefits for people is increasingly recognized. However, ongoing management practices favor vegetation oversimplification, often limiting greenspaces to lawns and tree canopy rather than multi‐layered vegetation that includes under‐ and midstorey, and the use of nonnative species. These practices hinder the potential of greenspaces to sustain indigenous biodiversity, particularly for taxa like insects that rely on plants for food and habitat. Yet, little is known about which plant species may maximize positive outcomes for taxonomically and functionally diverse insect communities in greenspaces. Additionally, while cities are expected to experience high rates of introductions, quantitative assessments of the relative occupancy of indigenous vs. introduced insect species in greenspace are rare, hindering understanding of how management may promote indigenous biodiversity while limiting the establishment of introduced insects. Using a hierarchically replicated study design across 15 public parks, we recorded occurrence data from 552 insect species on 133 plant species, differing in planting design element (lawn, midstorey, and tree canopy), midstorey growth form (forbs, lilioids, graminoids, and shrubs) and origin (nonnative, native, and indigenous), to assess (1) the relative contributions of indigenous and introduced insect species and (2) which plant species sustained the highest number of indigenous insects. We found that the insect community was overwhelmingly composed of indigenous rather than introduced species. Our findings further highlight the core role of multi‐layered vegetation in sustaining high insect biodiversity in urban areas, with indigenous midstorey and canopy representing key elements to maintain rich and functionally diverse indigenous insect communities. Intriguingly, graminoids supported the highest indigenous insect richness across all studied growth forms by plant origin groups. Our work highlights the opportunity presented by indigenous understory and midstorey plants, particularly indigenous graminoids, in our study area to promote indigenous insect biodiversity in urban greenspaces. Our study provides a blueprint and stimulus for architects, engineers, developers, designers, and planners to incorporate into their practice plant species palettes that foster a larger presence of indigenous over regionally native or nonnative plant species, while incorporating a broader mixture of midstorey growth forms.

Invertebrates comprise the most diversified animal group on Earth. Due to their long evolutionary history and small size, invertebrates occupy a remarkable range of ecological niches, and play an important role as “ecosystem engineers” by structuring networks of mutualistic and antagonistic ecological interactions in almost all terrestrial ecosystems. Urban forests provide critical ecosystem services to humans, and, as in other systems, invertebrates are central to structuring and maintaining the functioning of urban forests. Identifying the role of invertebrates in urban forests can help elucidate their importance to practitioners and the public, not only to preserve biodiversity in urban environments, but also to make the public aware of their functional importance in maintaining healthy greenspaces. In this review, we examine the multiple functional roles that invertebrates play in urban forests that contribute to ecosystem service provisioning, including pollination, predation, herbivory, seed and microorganism dispersal and organic matter decomposition, but also those that lead to disservices, primarily from a public health perspective, e.g., transmission of invertebrate-borne diseases. We then identify a number of ecological filters that structure urban forest invertebrate communities, such as changes in habitat structure, increased landscape imperviousness, microclimatic changes and pollution. We also discuss the complexity of ways that forest invertebrates respond to urbanisation, including acclimation, local extinction and evolution. Finally, we present management recommendations to support and conserve viable and diverse urban forest invertebrate populations into the future.

Protecting nature is a fundamental aspect of local and Indigenous cultures that has more recently become an urban sustainability goal. The benefits provided by nature to people and other species have sparked an upsurge in research exploring how best to manage existing nature in urban environments. Here we expand this focus by drawing attention to an emerging pathway of research and practice that is engaged with the idea of bringing nature back into cities (BNB). We argue that BNB could be a vital force of the 21st century urban‐sustainability agenda. However, the enthusiasm of practitioners and policymakers for incorporating BNB objectives into local and global strategies remains uneven. As interdisciplinary scholars involved with the theory and practice of caring for urban nature, we believe that the time is ripe to present a fresh perspective on seven key areas that can unlock the potential of actions to bring nature back into cities. Specifically, we: (a) argue that the sovereignty of local and Indigenous knowledge‐systems be acknowledged and respected; (b) contend that the choice of bringing nature back actions should be driven by inclusive decision‐making; (c) discuss advances in ecology that need to be addressed to facilitate the return of nature into cities; (d) outline how the diffusion of innovation theory may assist communication of BNB actions to stakeholders; (e) discuss how built‐environment professionals can demonstrate the value of urban infrastructure for BNB; (f) call for longitudinal research to understand, quantify and qualify the benefits of BNB actions and (g) consider solutions needed to address concerns about potential risks and disservices associated with actions to bring nature back into urban environments. Taken together, these perspectives, and the transdisciplinary framework that emerges from them, embody theoretical innovation regarding how to bring nature back into cities and a holistic view of how to make this happen in practice. Bringing nature back into cities has the potential to become an environmentally just and culturally inclusive dimension of the 21st urban sustainability agenda upon which future generations of city‐dwellers rely. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.