The concept of "ecological traps" was introduced over three decades ago. An ecological trap occurs when, by various mechanisms, low-quality (yielding low fitness) habitat is more attractive than good habitat, thus coaxing individuals to settle there despite a resultant loss of fitness. Empirical work on such traps has increased dramatically in the past decade, but the converse-avoidance of high...

To project potential habitat changes of 57 fish species under global warming, their suitable thermal habitat at 764 stream gaging stations in the contiguous United States was studied. Global warming was specified by air temperature increases projected by the Canadian Centre of Climate Modelling General Circulation Model for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. The aquatic thermal regime at each gagin...

Climate change has already impacted ecosystems and species and substantial impacts of climate change in the future are expected. Species distribution modeling is widely used to map the current potential distribution of species as well as to model the impact of future climate change on distribution of species. Mapping current distribution is useful for conservation planning and understanding the...

Habitat quality and metapopulation effects are the main hypotheses that currently explain the disproportionate decline of insects in cultivated Holarctic landscapes. The former assumes a degradation in habitat quality for insects within surviving ecosystems, the latter that too few, small or isolated islands of ecosystem remain in landscapes for populations to persist. These hypotheses are ofte...

Because data for conservation planning are always limited, surrogates are often substituted for intractable measurements such as species richness or population viability. We examined the ability of habitat quality to act as a surrogate for population performance for both Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus) and Northern Goshawks (Accipiter gentilis). We compared simple measures of habitat qual...

Process-based restoration aims to reestablish normative rates and magnitudes of physical, chemical, and biological processes that sustain river and floodplain ecosystems. Ecosystem conditions at any site are governed by hierarchical regional, watershed, and reach-scale processes controlling hydrologic and sediment regimes; floodplain and aquatic habitat dynamics; and riparian and aquatic biota....

It remains a challenge to identify the geographical patterns and underlying environmental associations of species with unique ecological niches and distinct behaviors. This in turn hinders our understanding of the ecology as well as effective conservation management of threatened species. The white-eared night heron (Gorsachius magnificus) is a non-migratory nocturnal bird species that has a pa...

To evaluate the impact of hypoxia (<2 mg O2 l−1) on habitat quality of pelagic prey fishes in the northern Gulf of Mexico, we used a spatially explicit, bioenergetics-based growth rate potential (GRP) model to develop indices of habitat quality. Our focus was on the pelagic bay anchovy Anchoa mitchilli and Gulf menhaden Brevoortia patronus. Positive GRP was considered high-quality habitat (HQH)...

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), is one of the world's most endangered species. Habitat loss and fragmentation have reduced its numbers, shrunk its distribution, and separated the population into isolated subpopulations. Such isolated, small populations are in danger of extinction due to random demographic factors and inbreeding. We used least-cost modeling as a systematic approach to ...

Abstmrr: Past str~dies on the nesting habitat of northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis) often relied on nests fomid opportunistically, either during timber-sale operations, by searching apparently "good goshawk habitat, or 1)y other search methods where areas were preselected based on known forest conditions. Therefore, a bias in the characterimtion of habitat surrounding northern goshawk nest ...