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The “edge effect” phenomenon: deriving population abundance patterns from individual animal movement decisions
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Edge effects have been observed in a vast spectrum
of animal populations. They occur where two conjoining
habitats interact to create ecological phenomena that are
not present in either habitat separately. On the individuallevel,
an edge effect is a change in behavioral tendency on or
near the edge. On the population-level, it is a pattern of population
abundance near an edge that cannot be explained in
terms of either habitat in isolation. That these two levels of
description exist suggests there ought to be a mathematical
link between them. Here, we make inroads into providing
such a link, deriving analytic expressions describing oftobserved
population abundance patterns from a model of
movement decisions near edges. Depending on the model
parameters, we can see positive, negative, or transitional
edge effects emerge. Importantly, the distance over which
animals make their decisions to move between habitats turns
out to be a key factor in quantifying the magnitude of certain
observed edge effects. -
- Date created
- 2016-01-01
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- Type of Item
- Article (Draft / Submitted)