HABITAT SELECTION AND USE - VARIATION IN SPACE AND TIME

CONVENORS
Rob Fuller
British Trust for Ornithology, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PU, United Kingdom
fax: +44 (0)1842 750030, email: rob.fuller@bto.org

Tomasz Wesołowski
Department of Avian Ecology, Wroclaw University, Sienkiewicza 21, , 50 335 Wroclaw, Poland
fax: +4871 322 28 17  , email:  tomwes@biol.uni.wroc.pl

DESCRIPTION
The development of sound approaches to habitat management and restoration depends strongly on understanding the nature of relationships between habitat and organisms.  Although it is well established that habitat relationships of many birds are scale-dependent and hierarchical, the integration of patch-scale and landscape-scale requirements of species remains a major challenge for practical conservation.  Furthermore, at any one scale, it is clear that occupancy or use of particular habitats can vary in space and time, making it hard to determine fundamental and critical habitat needs.  Patterns of habitat use are potentially influenced by a wide range of factors, some relevant at fine scales, others at relatively coarse scales.  These factors include predation risk, inter-specific competition, intra-specific competition (density dependent habitat selection / buffer effects), con-specific attraction, inter-specific attraction, site tenacity, tradition and local disturbance.  Such ‘modifiers’ of habitat use are one reason why models of habitat-bird distributions will not always have strong predictive power.  It is evident that many species vary in their habitat associations in different parts of their ranges, making it uncertain whether results of studies in one region can be extrapolated elsewhere.  At the level of the bird community, it is also unclear whether general principles about effects of landscape structure can be exported from one region to another.  This symposium draws attention to the spatially variable and dynamic quality of many habitat-bird relationships and to the implications for predicting responses of species to habitat change and the development of conservation plans.


KEYNOTE 1: Wesołowski, T and  Fuller RJ
Spatial variation in habitat use by birds at the European scale

KEYNOTE 2: Jean-Louis Martin, Fahrig, L; Kirk, D; Lindsay, K; Smith, AC; Marc André Villard
Selection of cultural landscapes by birds: do things look different across continents and, if so, why