A Resource-Based Habitat View for Conservation Butterflies in the British Landscape

by Dennis, Roger L. H.

• ISBN13: 9781405199452
• ISBN10: 1405199458
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-08
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

In A Resource-Based Habitat View for Conservation Roger Dennis introduces a novel approach to the understanding of habitats based on resources and conditions required by organisms and their access to them, a quantum shift from simplistic and ineffectual notions of habitats as vegetation units or biotopes. In drawing attention to what organisms actually use and need in landscapes, it focuses on resource composition, structure and connectedness, all of which describe habitat quality and underpin landscape heterogeneity. This contrasts with the current bipolar view of landscapes made up of habitat patches and empty matrix but illustrates how such a metapopulation approach of isolated patchworks can grow by adopting the new habitat viewpoint.The book explores principles underlying this new definition of habitat, and the impact of habitat components on populations, species' distributions, geographical ranges and range changes, with a view to conserving resources in landscapes for whole communities. It does this using the example of butterflies - the most alluring of insects, flagship organisms and key indicators of environmental health - in the British Isles, where they have been studied most intensively. The book forms essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners in ecology and conservation, particularly those concerned with managing sites and landscapes for wildlife.

Author Biography

Roger Dennis was educated at Oswestry School, Shropshire and at Durham University where he was awarded a Scholarship, a Class 1 BA in Geography and where later he obtained his PhD in Human Biology. After a short postdoctoral fellowship at Durham, he taught at The Manchester Grammar School until early retirement in 1993 following a spinal injury. Subsequently, he has received a succession of honorary research fellowships during which he has studied butterfly biogeography and ecology, producing over 175 publications. He is author of ‘The British Butterflies. Their Origin and Establishment’ (1977), ‘Butterflies and Climate Change’ (1993), joint author of ‘Butterflies on British and Irish Offshore Islands’ (1996) and edited ‘The Ecology of Butterflies in Britain’ (1992). He is currently an Honorary Visiting Professor at Staffordshire University and an Honorary Research Fellow at both NERC’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, and in the School of Life Sciences at Oxford Brookes University; he serves on the editorial board of four journals. In 2006, he received the Marsh Award for Lifetime Achievement in Lepidoptera Conservation. He lives in Cheshire with his wife Margaret and has one daughter, Pamela.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

What is a habitat? An awkward question

Definitions of habitat

Distinguishing habitat from biotope and vegetation units

A simple model for butterfly habitats

Habitat model

Key issues in the habitat model

Qualifying resource outlets

Consumables

Utilities

Conditions and conditioners

Resource database

Basic principles for butterfly habitats

Describing variation in resources

Resource variation in the habitat space

Resource dynamics within habitats

Habitats, butterfly resources and population status

Resource dynamics, population status and life cycle strategies

Resources, movements and dispersion patterns inside the habitat

Exploiting individual resources

Patterns and agents in resource use

Some principles relating to single resource use

Distribution of individuals in relation to the distribution of resources

Distribution of individuals on single resource patches

Placement of individual butterflies on single resource items

Manipulation of the micro-landscape: micro-architecture

Foraging: theory and practice

Butterfly habitats: searching for order

Biotope distinctions among British butterflies

Ecological classification of British butterflies

The habitat context for butterfly populations

From populations to metapopulations

Basic principles of metapopulations

The link between structure and dynamics in metapopulations

Empirical studies of butterfly metapopulations in Britain: habitat quality matters

Metapopulations and a resource view of the matrix

From metapopulations to an entire landscape approach

Landscape influences on butterfly habitats

Landscape-scale studies

Landscape components and their influence on butterfly habitat distributions

Influence of landscape and landform elements on butterfly habitats and resources

Case examples of the impact of landscape features on butterfly resources

Translating concepts from the habitat to a landscape scale

Landscape-scale studies on butterflies

Landscape modelling approaches

Habitat issues in butterfly geographical ranges

Components of geographical ranges

Ecological factors underlying ranges and distributions

Range changes before records

Present and future distributions: climate and land use changes

Habitats in butterfly conservation

Approaches to conservation and conserving butterflies

The single site in butterfly conservation

Multiple sites in single and multispecies approaches

Guiding principles for landscape restoration

Butterflies as indicators and flagship species

Appendices

Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) status, legal protection and taxonomic relationships for British butterflies

Resident and recently extinct species

Rare migrants, introductions and/or long-extinct species

Taxonomic affinities of British butterflies

Larval hostplants for British butterflies

Status of hostplants

Hostplant families, range of butterfly herbivory and hostplant phenology

Larval hostplant biotopes, phenology, growth forms, environments and life history strategies

Nectar sources of British butterflies

Key flowering nectar plants used by butterfly species

Nectar plants supporting 10 or more butterfly species

Nectar plant families supporting six or more butterfly species

Nectar plants used by butterflies more often or less often than expected

Adult feeding: nectar and non-nectar sources

Statistics on larval host use and adult feeding in British butterflies

Utility resources and life history data on British butterflies

Adult environment

Egg environment

Larval environment

Pupal environment

Life history

Adult and larval behaviour in British butterflies

Adult behaviour

Larval behaviour

Biotopes for British butterflies

References

Index

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