Shared and unique responses of insects to the interaction of urbanization and background climate

•Urban development occurs across diverse background climates.•Evident shifts in insect communities across urbanization and background climate.•Insects have shared and unique responses to urbanization and background climate.•We develop a framework for exploring shared and unique features of insect responses.•We illustrate use of the framework drawing on patterns in insect macrophysiology.

Urbanization profoundly alters biological systems; yet the predictability of responses to urbanization based on key biological traits, the repeatability of these patterns among cities, and how the impact of urbanization on biological systems varies as a function of background climatic conditions remain unknown. We use insects as a focal system to review the major patterns of responses to urbanization, and develop a framework for exploring the shared and unique features that characterize insect responses to urbanization and how responses to urbanization might systematically vary along background environmental gradients in climate. We then illustrate this framework using established patterns in insect macrophysiology.