Final Flashcards
To be considered habitat for a species, what three basic things must be provided? Traditional HSI models also focus on these 3 elements as life requisites
Water, Cover, Food
Direct or Indirect: Release of snowshoe hares that were captive reared
Direct
Direct or Indirect: Removal of red maple trees less than 10-cm diameter
Indirect
Direct or Indirect: Installation of a water guzzler to augment desert bighorn sheep habitat
Indirect
Direct or Indirect: Regulated hunting of wild turkey
Direct
Direct or Indirect: Use of goats to forage on invasive kudzu vine
Indirect
Direct or Indirect: Prescribed fire on a tall grass prairie
Indirect
Does the following longleaf-wiregrass ecosystem have relatively high or low vertical structure?

Low
List 3 specific micro-habitat variables that could be measured (must be quantifiable!) in the longleaf-wiregrass ecosystem pictured above. At least 1 variable must pertain directly to structure and at least 1 variable directly to floristics.
- Basal area
- Understory plant diversity
- Max dbh longleaf pine/ha
Which of the four habitats in the figure would you expect to support the highest animal diversity?

Habitat 4
Which of the four habitats is most likely a prairie?

Habitat 2 is best answer
First-order habitat selection
Selection of geographic range
- Habitat quality
Implies some measure of fitness payoff for an organism’s use of a particular resource or patch of habitat
- Fourth-order habitat selection
Selection of a specific food resource
- Habitat selection
Process of how habitats are chosen
- Habitat preference
Resource or habitat selection independent of availability
Briefly describe the difference between habitat use and habitat selection
Use is simply that, just use – it tells us nothing about how available a food resource or habitat type is from the other choices available. Selection is use proportional to availability.
Assuming Ideal Free Distribution, if you have 100 animals, how many would occupy each patch based on the available resources, as indicated by the bolded numbers?

A. 40
B. 10
C. 50
If a species is distributed among habitat patches following the ideal despotic distribution, habitat suitability will decline at a faster rate as density increases than if distributed following the ideal free distribution.
True
In addition to abundance and density, list three ways that can be used to evaluate the quality of a habitat for a particular species
- Health / Condition of Individuals
- Reproductive Success
- Survival Rate
Briefly explain why abundance or density are not always good indicators or habitat quality
Territoriality by dominant individuals may result in highest quality habitats having the fewest number of individuals
What is a major limitation when conducting surveys of wildlife that can be affected by weather, time of day, vegetation density, or researcher skill level (to name a few)?
Detectability
American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are able to access the entire landscape, and spend 35% of their time foraging in forests, 15% foraging in prairies, and 50% of their time foraging in agricultural fields. Describe the use of each habitat by crows as either random, avoiding, or selecting.

Prairie:
Forest:
Agriculture:
A. Avoidance
B. Avoidance
C: Selection
Which of the following can be said of HSI models?
- Additive HSI models better describe more generalist, rather than specialist, species
- It’s typically easier to construct a reliable HSI model for specialist species