Barred owls and landscape attributes influence territory occupancy of northern spotted owls.

ABSTRACT: We used multi-season occupancy analyses to model 2 fates of northern spotted owl territories in relation to habitat amount, habitat fragmentation, and the presence of barred owls in Washington State, USA, 1989-2005. Local colonization is the probability a territory unoccupied by a spotted owl in year i would be occupied in year i + 1, and local extinction is the probability a territory that was occupied by a spotted owl in year i would be unoccupied in year i + 1. We found a negative relationship between local extinction probability and amount of late-seral forest edge. We found a negative relationship between colonization probability and the number of late-seral forest patches (higher fragmentation), and a negative relationship between colonization probability

SUBMITTER: Sovern SG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4277855 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature