using a data-constrained model of home range establishment to predict abundance in spatially heterogeneous habitats使用data-constrained模型预测丰富的活动范围建立空间异构的栖息地.pdfVIP

Using a Data-Constrained Model of Home Range Establishment to Predict Abundance in Spatially Heterogeneous Habitats 1,2 1 1 Mark C. Vanderwel *, Jay R. Malcolm , John P. Caspersen 1 Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 2 Computational Ecology and Environmental Science Group, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, United Kingdom Abstract Mechanistic modelling approaches that explicitly translate from individual-scale resource selection to the distribution and abundance of a larger population may be better suited to predicting responses to spatially heterogeneous habitat alteration than commonly-used regression models. We developed an individual-based model of home range establishment that, given a mapped distribution of local habitat values, estimates species abundance by simulating the number and position of viable home ranges that can be maintained across a spatially heterogeneous area. We estimated parameters for this model from data on red-backed vole (Myodes gapperi) abundances in 31 boreal forest sites in Ontario, Canada. The home range model had considerably more support from these data than both non-spatial regression models based on the same original habitat variables and a mean-abundance null model. It had nearly equivalent support to a non-spatial regression model that, like the home range model, scaled an aggregate measure of habitat value from local associations with habitat resources. The home range and habitat-value regression models gave similar predictions for vole abundance under simulations of light- and moderate-intensity partial forest harvesting, but the home range model predicted lower abundances than the regression model under high-inte