Heavy herbivory by ungulates can substantially alter habitat, but the indirect consequences of habitat modification for animal assemblages that rely on that habitat are not well studied. This is a particularly important topic given that climate change can alter plant-herbivore interactions. We explored short-term responses of small mammal communities to recent exclusion of Rocky Mountain elk (C...

Ecological niche models (ENM) have become a popular tool to define and predict the "ecological niche" of a species. An implicit assumption of the ENMs is that the predicted ecological niche of a species actually reflects the adaptive landscape of the species. Thus in sites predicted to be highly suitable, species would have maximum fitness compared to in sites predicted to be poorly suitable. A...

Bird species’ community responses to land use in the suburbanizing Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA, were contrasted among reserves, rural lands, and suburbs. For each land use type, bird composition, diversity, and abundance were recorded for 2 years in 99 plots in three sampling units (each 4500 ha). A habitat gradient defined by canopy structure (grasslands to savannas to forests) was influenced ...

Relatively little information is available on environmental associations and the conservation of Odonata in the Maltese Islands. Aquatic habitats are normally spatio-temporally restricted, often located within predominantly rural landscapes, and are thereby susceptible to farmland water management practices, which may create additional pressure on water resources. This study investigates how od...

Ecological theory and biodiversity conservation have traditionally relied on the number of species recorded at a site, but it is agreed that site richness represents only a portion of the species that can inhabit particular ecological conditions, that is, the habitat-specific species pool. Knowledge of the species pool at different sites enables meaningful comparisons of biodiversity and provid...

We examined temporal changes in macrofaunal α- and β-diversity over several spatial scales (within patches, among patches, across landscapes and across regions) in Long Island Sound on the northeast USA coast. Regional ε-diversity was estimated at 144 taxa, however γ-diversity fluctuated over time as did α- and β-diversity components. Based on additive partitioning, patch- and region-scale β-di...

High Antarctic coastal marine environments are comparatively pristine with strong environmental gradients, which make them important places to investigate biodiversity relationships. Defining how different environmental features contribute to shifts in beta-diversity is especially important as these shifts reflect both spatio-temporal variations in species richness and the degree of ecological ...

The effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on the genetic structure and vulnerability of populations strongly depend on the behaviour of a particular species. In this thesis, I examined the effects of forest fragmentation on genetic population structure with the aim of identifying and evaluating the different genetic and behavioural factors important for species conservation and management o...

In highly seasonal tropical environments, temporal changes in habitat and resources are a significant determinant of the spatial distribution of species. This study disentangles the effects of spatial and mid to long-term temporal heterogeneity in habitat on the diversity and abundance of savanna birds by testing four competing conceptual models of varying complexity. Focussing on sites in nort...

LONGHORN BEETLES (COLEOPTERA Cerambycidae) have been used to identify sites of high biological diversity and conservation value in cultivated landscapes, but were rarely studied in changing landscapes of humid tropics. This study was conducted in a region of southern Yunnan, China, which was dominated by natural rainforest until 30 years ago, but is successively transformed into commercial rubb...