INTRODUCTION Measurement errors and questionnaire effects in survey data can have substantial impact on estimates of statistical relationships. Although the customer satisfaction literature contains some discussion of scaling issues (Westbrook and Oliver 1981), statistical models of customer satisfaction have not explicitly recognized measurement issues. This paper enhances the traditional mode...

Sanders, Kathryn E. M.S., Purdue University, May 2012. Relative Importance of Water Quality and Habitat to Fish Communities in Streams Influenced by Agricultural Land Use in the Cedar Creek Watershed, Indiana. Major Professor: Robert B. Gillespie. Agricultural land use has been shown to negatively impact fish communities in headwater streams that also serve as agricultural drainage ditches. The...

Habitat use by mule deer was studied in the Mapimí Biosphere Reserve in the Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico. The deer population in this area is distributed among isolated hills and sierra. Because of their similar soil and vegetation characteristics, these hills are a homogeneous element of the landscape. This study was carried out within this element, in order to understand the habitat variables th...

Delimiting the habitat characteristics describing the environmental conditions required by a species has become a critical tool for predicting organismal responses to environmental change. Grinnell emphasized the effects of environmental factors on the ability of a population to maintain a positive growth rate, yet few studies have included demographic or reproductive data in analyses of the Gr...

A major conservation concern is whether population size and other ecological variables change linearly with habitat loss, or whether they suddenly decline more rapidly below a "critical threshold" level of habitat. The most commonly discussed explanation for critical threshold responses to habitat loss focus on habitat configuration. As habitat loss progresses, the remaining habitat is increasi...

Although understanding habitat relationships remains fundamental to guiding wildlife management, these basic prerequisites remain vague and largely unstudied for the wolverine. Currently, a study of wolverine ecology conducted in Montana, USA, in the 1970s is the sole source of information on habitat requirements of wolverines in the conterminous United States. The Montana study and studies con...

Mangroves are important nursery and feeding areas for fish. Their rich invertebrate faunas render them productive feeding areas, while their shallow waters and structural complexity provide sanctuary habitats at a variety of scales. However, in most parts of the world mangroves are available to fish for only part of the time because they are alternately inundated and exposed by the high-tide/lo...

European Bison (Bison bonasus) barely escaped extinction in the early 20th century and now only occur in small isolated herds scattered across Central and Eastern Europe. The species’ survival in the wild depends on identifying suitable habitat for establishing bison metapopulations via reintroductions of new herds. We assessed European Bison habitat across the Carpathian Mountains, a stronghol...

In the past decade, significant efforts have been made to describe fish-habitat associations. However, most studies have oversimplified actual connections between fish assemblages and their habitats by using univariate correlations. The purpose of this study was to identify the features of habitat forming corals that facilitate and influences assemblages of associated species such as fishes. Fo...