Covering an area of seven hectares and inaugurated in 2010, the Castilla-La Mancha Botanical Garden, located on Avenida de La Mancha in Albacete, next to the Vía Verde a La Pulgosa, currently houses almost 30,000 plants of around 2,100 species or subspecies in its living collections. This important museum space is currently sponsored by Albacete City Council, Albacete Provincial Council and the University of Castilla-La Mancha.

Since 2020, the regional Botanical Garden has been certified for ecological excellence, thanks to the implementation of measures that promote the proper use of water and energy, recycling, the efficient use of soil resources and integrated pest management. This ecological management, which is difficult to implement, highly respectful of nature and essential in a space such as this, focused mainly on the conservation, dissemination and study of flora, has led to the emergence of an interesting community of animals associated with the plant collections and their recreated habitats.

Among them, insects are a very abundant fauna group in the botanical garden, which has benefited from the presence of a wide variety of plants and recreated habitats. In this context, botanical gardens can serve as refuges for invertebrates, animals that are essential to the proper functioning of nature's networks. Thus, invertebrates, and especially insects, are essential agents in pollination (including crops), many of them are predators of pests or collaborate in the decomposition of organic matter and recycling of nutrients, among other things. However, according to recent studies, insect diversity is declining rapidly on a global scale, mainly due to human causes such as habitat destruction and pesticide abuse.

Combining concern for the widespread loss of insects and curiosity about how the Castilla-La Mancha Botanical Garden functions ecologically as a refuge for these creatures, a study has recently been conducted on dragonflies and damselflies (odonates) in this unique location in the city. After comparing the diversity of species in this group of insects between five bodies of water (two natural: Laguna del Arquillo and Laguna de los Ojos de Villaverde; and three artificial ones: the recreated lagoons of Ruidera and Tablas de Daimiel, in the JBCLM, and a pond in a park in the city of Albacete), the data obtained showed that the recreated lagoons in the botanical garden are home to a community of odonates with a generalist ecology, but as rich in species as would be expected in a natural lagoon of the same size. In this way, the aquatic habitats of the Castilla-La Mancha Botanical Garden serve as a valuable refuge for these insects, which are bioindicators of the health of ecosystems in the urban environment of the city of Albacete. The study identified 13 species of dragonflies and damselflies in the city's botanical garden. This demonstrates that naturalised freshwater bodies can function as reservoirs for odonates with a species richness similar in abundance to that found in a natural lake area. In addition, the study can serve as a pilot project to demonstrate how botanical gardens can provide refuge for wildlife biodiversity in urban or suburban environments around the world.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that several species of African dragonflies have been detected in the Botanical Garden. These insects are spreading northwards due to rising temperatures caused by global warming.

This research highlights the important role played by the Botanical Garden of Castilla-La Mancha as a hotspot of urban biodiversity in the city of Albacete.

Article: Pinilla-Rosa M., G. García-Saúco, A. Santiago, P. Ferrandis & M. Méndez. Can botanic gardens serve as refuges for taxonomic and functional diversity of Odonata? The case of the botanic garden of Castilla–La Mancha (Spain). Limnology (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10201-022-00704-3