Habitat Quality: a Brief Review for Wildlife Biologists

Understanding habitat quality for wildlife is extremely important for biologists, but few papers have explored the pros and cons of how to measure it. In this review, I clarify terminology and distinguish habitat quality from related terms, differentiate habitat quality from animals’ and wildlife managers’ perspectives, and describe different ways of measuring habitat quality in the field. As is feasible, biologists concerned with habitat quality should emphasize demographic variables while recognizing that reproduction, survival, and abundance may not be positively correlated. Animal distribution can also reveal habitat quality (e.g., through patterns of habitat selection), but biologists should first investigate how closely their subjects follow ideal distributions because numerous ecological factors can lead animals to select poor, and avoid rich, habitats. Lastly, measures of the animals’ body condition can provide convenient measures of habitat quality, but variation in body condition may not result in differential animal fitness among habitats. Biologists should use caution before relying on shortcuts from more labor-intensive demographic work. TRANSACTIONS OF THE WESTERN SECTION OF THE WILDLIFE SOCIETY 41:31–41; 2005