Abstract
Quantification in ecology has been the sine qua non that has differentiated rigorous science from something less. It is how we have “kept the books.” Quantifying the quantifiable to account for population response to resource availability usually has meant that the quantity of some resource (e.g., for herbivores, plant biomass, or areal coverage of the plant community or habitat) has been assumed to have some causal effect on some quantitative measure of animal response (e.g., the number or organisms surviving and recruited into the population). As scale effects have been recognized as important, landscape ecologists have followed a similar methodology and have assumed that the habitat area coverage (quantity) bears some relation to population and species performance and health. The explanatory power of the spatial amount of habitat elements seems inconsistent, and available metrics to assess the effects of spatial arrangement are problematic. Further, organisms respond to the quality of their food resource. In this chapter, I make the argument that an enhanced understanding of animal response to resource availability may be possible if two elements are added to the standard, single currency quantity approach. The first relates to measuring resource quality and requires adding an additional currency to our ecological ledger book. The second element incorporates the idea of temporal discontinuity in resource quantity and quality. I suggest that consideration and a broader incorporation of these two elements into wildlife ecology will enhance our understanding of animal response to resource availability at both small and larger spatial extents.
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BISSONETTE, J.A. (2007). Resource Acquisition and Animal Response in Dynamic Landscapes. In: Bissonette, J.A., Storch, I. (eds) Temporal Dimensions of Landscape Ecology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-45447-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-45447-4_2
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