Session Information
| Session | Poster Session | | Date | Monday (2008-04-07) | | Time | 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | | Room | Grand Terrace |
Presentation Information
| Presenter | Julie Heinrichs | | Title | Population viability impacts of habitat additions and subtractions: A simulation experiment with endangered kangaroo rats | | Affiliation | University of Calgary | | Authors | Julie Heinrichs, Darren Bender, David Gummer, Nathan Schumaker | | Keywords | Critical habitat, Habitat quality, Kangaroo rat, Patch removal experiment, Population viability | | Presentation Type | Poster | Abstract:
Population viability is influenced by the quality, quantity and configuration of habitat. For species at risk, a principal challenge is to determine the relative influence of these variables on population persistence and decipher the individual habitat patches required for long-term population viability. As such, identification of critical habitat elements may require the integration of species occurrence mapping, demographic studies, and spatially-explicit population viability analysis. We present here a novel approach for identifying critical habitat, using endangered Ord’s kangaroo rats (Dipodomys ordii) in Canada. Natural habitat for the species consists of actively-eroding sand dunes; however, kangaroo rats also use disturbed sandy areas (typically roadsides) which are hypothesized to be population sinks. Our study employed a spatially explicit population model to integrate habitat quality information from habitat and mark-recapture studies, with habitat quantity and configuration information derived from a species occurrence model. We then used iterative patch addition and removal experiments to generate estimates of the contribution of individual patches to overall population viability. Results will be presented on the relative roles of habitat quality and quantity in our study system, as well as the successes and shortcomings of this approach for identifying critical habitat. |
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