Suburban Areas Provide Refuge for Carabids in Cities With High Climate Seasonality and Urban Heat Island Effects: A Global Meta‐Analysis

ABSTRACT Aim Ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) are a highly diverse group of soil‐associated organisms with varied biological functions, diet preferences and mobility. Their diversity has made them a popular focus in urbanisation research. However, studies on urbanisation's impact on Carabid species richness and abundance have yielded inconsistent results, showing negative, positive, neutral and even non‐linear effects. This study aimed to synthesise the existing literature to identify potential non‐linear effects of rural‐to‐urban gradients while accounting for the influence of climatic confounding factors. Location Global. Methods We conducted hierarchical meta‐analyses to evaluate non‐linear urbanisation effects on Carabid species richness and abundance. additionally, we examined the moderating roles of climate variables (annual precipitation, precipitation seasonality) and the relative urban heat island (UHI) effect. From 25 relevant studies, we extracted 43 effect sizes for species richness and 46 for assemblage‐level abundance. Results Our analysis revealed a significant non‐linear relationship between urbanisation and carabid abundance, characterised by an increase from rural to suburban areas, followed by a decline towards city centres. Cities with high precipitation seasonality and elevated relative UHI were associated with a suburban peak in both abundance and species richness, likely due to suburban areas mitigating extreme weather, such as harsh winters and heatwaves. Conversely, in climates with low precipitation seasonality and UHI, suburban areas showed a decline, as these conditions do not provide the mitigating benefits, yet the disadvantages of urbanisation remain. Main Conclusions Our findings highlight the crucial role of climate as a confounding factor in the non‐linear effects of urbanisation, underscoring the importance of integrating these variables into future research. Moreover, the results suggest that suburban environments in regions with high climatic seasonality and elevated UHI may hold conservation potential, supporting higher carabid abundance and species richness compared to urban cores or rural regions.