Discrepancies in occupancy and abundance approaches to identifying and protecting habitat for an at-risk species.

ABSTRACT: Predicting how environmental factors affect the distribution of species is a fundamental goal of conservation biology. Conservation biologists rely on species distribution and abundance models to identify key habitat characteristics for species. Occupancy modeling is frequently promoted as a practical alternative to use of abundance in identifying habitat quality. While occupancy and abundance are potentially governed by different limiting factors operating at different scales, few studies have directly compared predictive models for these approaches in the same system. We evaluated how much occupancy and abundance are driven by the same environmental factors for a species of conservation concern, the greater short-horned lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi). Occupancy was most strongly d

SUBMITTER: Dibner RR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5655793 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature