Habitat selection in mosaic landscapes

Abstract

Density-dependent habitat selection is one of the key mechanisms capable of modifying the distribution and abundance of species at the landscape scale. Recent extensions of the theory based on isodars (plots of the density of individuals in pairs of habitats such that an individual's expected reproductive success is equal in both) demonstrate how we can measure habitat selection's role in spatial population regulation, and how differences between habitats can modify overall population size. One application of the theory uses patterns of density across habitat boundaries to estimate foraging and dispersal scales of habitat selection, and thereby the effective bounds of the landscape to different species. Other extensions allow us to follow the time course of community recovery following habitat disturbance, and to infer interactions between species in ecological communities. Under somewhat restricted conditions of an ideal free distribution it is possible to test for a perfect match between habitat quality and population density with only data on population density. -from Author