PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 2: Measuring landscape connectivity - tool for species conservation
Organizer(s): P Kindlmann, F Burel, and J Baudry
Monday, August 8, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 510b, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Connecting behavior to the landscape: Interactions between vertebrate behavior and landscape structure in measures of connectivity.
Bowne, David *,1, 1 Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
ABSTRACT- Landscape connectivity is defined as the degree to which landscape features promote or inhibit movement between habitat patches. Thus connectivity is partially a result of how individual organisms behave in non-suitable habitats (i.e. the landscape matrix). Landscape ecologists have tacitly assumed that features of the matrix such as habitat edges and habitat configuration do influence the behavior of a dispersing individual in such a way that alters the probability of a suitable habitat patch being reached. I tested this assumption for painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) moving between ponds in an agricultural landscape in northern Virginia, USA. I studied these turtles using a multi-site, mark-recapture protocol, by radio-telemetry, and by experimentation. I found that the searching behavior of painted turtles does influence connectivity but its reaction to habitats encountered en route does not. Painted turtles have a directed movement behavior such that different habitat types do not significantly alter direction of movement. Painted turtles exhibited similar directed movement behavior at both small spatial scales (< 100 m) and large spatial ones (> 1000 m) for naive and experienced turtles, respectively. This finding agrees with simulation predictions that a nearly straight correlated walk is a very effective strategy for finding suitable habitat. Roads were the only landscape feature detected to have an important effect on connectivity; they do not alter behavior but do reduce the likelihood of successful dispersal. Connectivity measures that neglect species-specific searching strategy are unlikely to be satisfactory.
Key words: connectivity, movement, behavior, landscape