A method for detecting undervalued resources with application to breeding birds.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Behavioral Ecology
• Conservation Biology

Background:

• Anthropogenic environmental changes can disrupt habitat selection, leading to individuals choosing suboptimal habitats (ecological traps).
• A less recognized issue is habitat undervaluation, where individuals fail to select high-quality habitats due to missing or incorrect cues, leading to reduced population densities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a habitat selection model incorporating both individual and habitat quality variations to predict density, fitness, and individual quality patterns.
• To investigate the phenomenon of habitat undervaluation, where high-quality resources are overlooked, using a long-term empirical dataset.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel habitat selection model that simultaneously accounts for variation in individual and habitat quality.
• Applied the model to a seven-year dataset of Acadian Flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) in urbanizing landscapes in Ohio, USA.
• Compared predictions of habitat undervaluation with empirical data on bird density and fitness in urban versus rural forest patches.

Main Results:

• The model predicts that only habitat undervaluation, not other mechanisms, leads to similar-quality individuals occupying lower-quality territories.
• Empirical data from Acadian Flycatchers in urbanizing landscapes did not support the hypothesis that urban forests are undervalued.
• Field observations indicated that urban forests supported Acadian Flycatchers as expected, without evidence of undervaluation.

Conclusions:

• The study expands habitat selection theory by introducing and testing the concept of undervaluation.
• The findings demonstrate the utility of the developed model for testing hypotheses about habitat assessment in empirical datasets.
• Despite initial predictions, urban forests in the study system were not undervalued by Acadian Flycatchers, suggesting complex interactions between urbanization and habitat selection cues.