PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #21: Conservation of Biodiversity: Human landscapes, reserve design. Presiding: C. Meine.
Tuesday, August 7, 2001. 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Madison Ballroom D.
Corridors as movement conduits in a large-scale experiment.
Haddad, Nick1, Tewksbury, Josh2, 1 2
ABSTRACT- Conservation corridors could function as movement conduits, as habitat, or both. In a large-scale experiment, we show that corridors serve as a movement conduit for a butterfly, Euptoieta claudia, even though it appears to be less preferred habitat. Experimental patches and corridors were created by clearing large areas of pine forest. In each of four experimental blocks, five patches between 1-1.375 ha in size were arranged such that four were each 150 m from one side of the fifth. One of the four peripheral patches was connected to the central patch by a 25 m wide open corridor. Through mark-recapture studies of E. claudia, we found that it was nearly four times more likely to move between connected rather than unconnected patches. However, it was one-fourth as abundant in corridors as in patches. Even in the patch, the butterfly avoids edges, which may explain its low abundance in corridors. Thus, corridors functioned as movement conduits for E. claudia even though they were not preferred habitat.
KEY WORDS: corridor, movement, conservation, butterfly