Habitat area, quality and connectivity: Striking the balance for efficient conservation

Abstract

Population viability can depend on habitat area, habitat quality, the spatial arrangement of habitats (aggregations and connections) and the properties of the intervening non-breeding (matrix) land. Hodgson et al. [Journal of Applied Ecology46 (2009) 964] and Doerr, Barrett & Doerr (Journal of Applied Ecology, 2011) disagree on the relative importance of these landscape attributes in enabling species to persist and change their distributions in response to climate change. 2.A brief review of published evidence suggests that variations in habitat area and quality have bigger effects than variations in spatial arrangement of habitats or properties of the intervening land. Even if structural fe..