Abstract
Evaluation of habitat preferences and habitat quality are central to our understanding of spatial and population ecology, as well as conservation and management. Habitat preference and quality depend on density and behaviour. So we should be able to use our understanding of evolutionary behavioural ecology and density dependence to develop quick and reliable methods for estimating habitat quality. I illustrate one promising approach that merges simple models of density dependence with similarly simple foraging and life-history theory. The combined model predicts a sharp discontinuity in foraging strategy near a habitat’s carrying capacity. So we conducted a series of experiments on voles to evaluate the theory in the field. We were so delighted with the results that we began to test its generality. Habitat selection appears, with the additional data from these tests, to be somewhat more dense than assumed by theory. The shape of the underlying density-dependent fitness functions may be labile and variable among habitats and through time. Despite these complications, our experiments reaffirm a pivotal role for density-dependent habitat selection in the local distribution of species.
Other information
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