Uncertainty analysis favours selection of spatially aggregated reserve networks

Abstract

It has been widely argued that habitat fragmentation is bad for (meta)population persistence and that a high level of fragmentation is a similarly undesirable characteristic for a reserve network. However, modelling the effects of fragmentation for many species is very difficult due to high data demands and uncertainty concerning its effect on particular species. Hence, several reserve selection methods employ qualitative heuristics such as boundary length penalties that aggregate reserve network structures. This aggregation usually comes at a cost because low quality habitats will be included for the sake of increased connectivity. Here a biologically justified method for designing aggregat..