Resource Selection and Scale

1
Resource Selection and Scale

• Habitat (resource) Selection
• Levels of Selection
• Multiple Scale Studies
• Methodological Issues

2
Behavioral Mechanisms of Resource (Habitat)
Selection

• The Problem
• We look at distributions of animals among
  habitats and try to infer what habitats are most
  important to our species of interest
• This allows us to compare use of habitat to
  availability of habitat (which is often defined
  as selection, but does not allow us to say
  ANYTHING about preference of habitat

3
Problem Results Because Distributional Pattern ?
Choice

• Predators may promote habitat specificity without
  selection by the prey
• pepper moths
• Sessile organisms may have distribution affected
  by dispersal agents
• plankton, barnacles---wave action
• Competitive exclusion may force animals to settle
  in suboptimal habitat

4
The Solution?

• Detailed behavioral study
• Understand the mechanism that produces
  distributional pattern
• If all else is equal is a certain habitat
  selected over another?
• Usually takes lab and field approach

5
Habitat Selection by Tits (Partridge 1978)

• Wild and hand-reared birds show preferences when
  given equal access to oak and pine in lab
• Coal tits prefer pine
• Blue tits prefer oak
• Genetic component to selection indicated by
  hand-reared birds

Wild Birds
Hand- reared
Percentage of Time
6
Choices Made by Tits Are Adaptive

• Coal tits better at foraging skills needed in
  pines
• Blue tits better at foraging skills needed in oak

Skills Appropriate for Pine Oak
Detecting Cammo Prey
Ability to Tear and Hack
7
As With Tits, Most Studies Indicate Choices are
Innate, but Modified by Experience

• Red-legged and Cascade Frog Tadpoles (Wiens 1972)
• RL--live in naturally striped backgrounds
  (sticks, cattails, etc)
• C--live in square backgrounds (gravel)
• Preference for squares by cascade reduced by
  raising on stripes--visa versa for red-legged

Squares
C
Selection
RL
C
RL
Stripes
Raised on square background
Raised on striped background
8
Features Important in Habitat Selection (Verner
1975, Hilden 1965, Klopfer and Hailman 1965)

• Food
• Nest Sites
• Song Posts, Hunting Perches, Shelter
• Terrain
• Vegetation
• Previous Experience
• Other Animals
• Social stimulation
• Colonial Animals--young often settle in
  established colonies (Herring Gulls, Drost 1958)

9
How Are Multiple Cues Integrated?

• Summation (Hilden 1965)
• each cue is added or subtracted to form a total
  score for a habitat
• if score exceeds some threshold, animal settles
• Niche Gestalt (James 1971)
• habitat is responded to as a whole
• Hierarchical Selection (Wiens and Rotenberry
  1981)
• large scale vs. fine scale selection

10
Natural Ordering of Selection Process (Johnson
1980)

• First order
• Selection of the physical or geographical range
  of a a species
• Second order
• Placement of the home range of an individual or
  social group within the species range
• Third order
• Use of various habitat components within the home
  range
• Fourth order
• Selection of resources from within areas within
  the home range (food selection at a foraging
  site, for example)

11
Scale Matters
Need to understand differences in each animals
grain and extent
12
Scale and Our Perception of Availability

• Your insights and conclusions about resource
  selection are dependent upon your definition of
  resource availability
• Availability in one sense defines the level in
  the ordered selection hierarchy
• You define available as habitat within the home
  range or within the western US, etc.
• But the point isthe investigator defines
  availability

13
New Sensors are Available to Better Define
Availability

• Animal-borne Video and Environmental Data
  Collection Systems

• Sound, vibration
• Pressure, depth
• Acceleration
• Travel speed rhythm, activity
• Imagery
• Blood flow / pressure, heart rate
• Body orientation
• Light
• Temperature (internal, external)
• Body fluid chemistry
• Biopotentials

Cooke et al. 2004 TREE Moll et al. 2007 TREE
14
Integrating Location and Behavior
New Goal is to Integrate multiple sensors to
better understand the behavioral context of a
location
Rutz et al. 2007 Science
15
But Still We Define Available

• My suggestion is to focus on use rather than
  useavailability.
• GPS transmitters are constantly improving our
  view of what is used.

16
Habitat relationships of wildlife include
multiple hierarchical levels and spatial scales

• Capercaillie (Black Grouse)
• Forest stand
• Moderate canopy cover
• Large stands
• Home range
• Old forest
• Contiguous forest
• Management is needed at landscape scale
• European political structure does not allow
• Hunters manage at stand scale for habitat
  structure (Storch 1997)

17
Emergent effect of habitat loss more than just
reduction in area or reduction in connectivity

• American Martin (Bissonette et al. 1997)
• Substand
• Mature forest with CWD, local variation
• Stand
• Old contiguous forest, except in Maine where even
  young forests and clearings are used because prey
  is abundant
• Home range
• Uniformly prefer mature forest
• No selection in uniform old forest environments
• Landscape
• Consistent selection for areas with 75 forest

Effect of fragmentation was not evident until
landscape scale was used, happens over smaller
spatial extent outside of Maine where loss of
forest results in patches of unsuitable habitat
interspersed with suitable habitat
18
Managing for Goshawks at Multiple Scales(Finn et
al. 2002, 2003)

• Biologically-relevant scales need to be
  investigated
• Managers must provide different resources at some
  scales
• Strategies to statistically sort among the myriad
  of inter-related variables
• Only include variables of biological and
  management relevancy
• Weed out redundant variables
• Conduct single scale analysis and later combine
  best predictors at each scale to determine
  important scales

19
Methodological Issues

• How to sample across multiple scales (Brennen et
  al. 2002)
• Too much data
• Overpowering?
• What is experimental unit?
• Landscape, not the pixel
• Spatial Autocorrelation

20
Discussion

• In small breakout groups consider the Nielsen et
  al. reading.
• Are they studying selection? Preference?
• Do they define available?
• What study design (according to Thomas and
  Taylor) is being used?
• Is selection hierarchical and scale dependent?
• How does selection vary within a season and why?
• How are hypotheses (models) developed, evaluated,
  ranked?
• How could a manager implement their research
  findings to better design forest harvest?

21
References

• Wiens, JA, Van Horne, B., and BR Noon. 2002.
  Integrating landscape structure and scale into
  natural resource management. Pp. 23-67. In J. Liu
  and WW Taylor, eds. Integrating landscape ecology
  into natural resource management. Cambridge
  University Press. Cambridge, UK
• Brennen, JM, Bender, DJ, Contreras, TA, and L
  Fahrig. 2002. Focal patch landscape studies for
  wildlife management optimizing sampling effort
  across scales. Pp. 68-91. In J. Liu and WW
  Taylor, eds. Integrating landscape ecology into
  natural resource management. Cambridge University
  Press. Cambridge, UK
• Finn, SP, JM Marzluff, and DE Varland. 2002.
  Effects of landscape and local habitat attributes
  on northern goshawk site occupancy in western
  Washington. Forest Science 48427-436.
• Finn, SP, DE Varland, and JM Marzluff. 2003.
• Cody, ML. (ed.). 1985. Habitat selection in
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• Fretwell, SD and Lucas, HL, Jr. 1969. On
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• Hilden, O. 1965. Habitat selection in birds.
  Annales Zoologici Fennici 253-75.
• James, FC. 1971. Ordinations of habitat
  relationships among breeding birds. Wilson Bull.
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• Klomp, H. 1954. De terreinkeus van de Kievit,
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• Klopfer, PH and JP Hailman. 1965. Habitat
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• Partridge, L. 1978. Habitat selection. Pp.
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• Verner, J. 1975. Avian behavior and habitat
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