Eurasian lynx are slowly recovering in Germany after an absence of about 100 years, and additional reintroduction programs have been launched. However, suitable habitat is patchily distributed in Germany, and whether patches could host a viable population or contribute to the potential spread of lynx is uncertain. We combined demographic scenarios with a spatially explicit population simulation...

Habitat fragmentation involves habitat loss concomitant with changes in spatial configuration, confounding mechanistic drivers of biodiversity change associated with habitat disturbance. Studies attempting to isolate the effects of altered habitat configuration on associated communities have reported variable results. This variability may be explained in part by the fragmentation threshold hypo...

We develop methods for quantifying habitat connectivity at multiple scales and assigning conservation priority to habitat patches based on their contribution to connectivity. By representing the habitat mosaic as a mathematical "graph," we show that percolation theory can be used to quantify connectivity at multiple scales from empirical landscape data. Our results indicate that connectivity of...

Currently, the habitat of many species is fragmented, resulting in small local populations with individuals occasionally dispersing between the remaining habitat patches. In a solitary bee metapopulation, extinction probability was related to both local bee population sizes and pollen resources measured as host plant population size. Patch size, on the other hand, had no additional predictive p...

To organize and prioritise species-specific conservation efforts, we delineate ‘functional conservation units’ for the threatened Alcon Blue butterfly Maculinea alcon in Belgium. We used detailed distribution data on the butterfly, its host plant and its habitat, present-day population sizes and its mobility and colonization capacity to determine functional conservation units (FCUs) on differen...

This study aimed at comparing six patch connectivity measures by fitting them to field data. We used occupancy data for eight beetle and two pseudoscorpion species from 281 hollow oaks in southeast Sweden. Species occupancy was modelled in relation to tree characteristics and one measure of patch connectivity at a time. For each connectivity measure we searched for the spatial scale that genera...

Habitat loss and fragmentation pose a major threat to flora and fauna worldwide. For those species that can move between habitat patches, it is important to consider the extent to which the patches are connected. This can be complex as many species may inhabit a given landscape, and the scale at which each one interacts with the landscape (and consequently its relative ability to move through i...

The spatio-temporal dynamics of wet heathlands from two landscapes in high Ardenne (Belgium), as well as the consequences of such dynamics on plant communities were investigated. Past and present destruction and origin of habitat patches have resulted in a complex network of different aged habitat

Despite a marked increase in the focus toward biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes, studies that confirm species breeding success are scarce and limited. In this paper, we asked whether local (area of forest patches) and landscape (amount of suitable habitat surrounding of focal patches) factors affect the breeding success of raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) in Tokyo, Centr...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Hygrochasy is a capsule-opening mechanism predominantly associated with plants in arid habitats, where it facilitates spatially and temporally restricted dispersal. Recently, hygrochastic capsules were described in detail for the first time in alpine Veronica in New Zealand. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether hygrochastic capsules are an adaptation of al...