Symposium number: 13

Title: DETECTING ECOLOGICAL TRAPS: AVIAN AND HUMAN PERSPECTIVES

Principal organizer: Marc André Villard
University of Moncton, Département de biologie, Moncton, NB, E1A 3E9, Canada
email: villarm@umoncton.ca

Second organizer: Tomas Pärt
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Conservation Biology, Box 7002, SE-750 07, Uppsala, Sweden

First keynote speaker: Tomas Pärt
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Conservation Biology, Box 7002, SE-750 07, Uppsala, Sweden
Title of first keynote paper: Ecological traps: Avian and human perspectives

Second keynote speaker: Luc Lens
Ghent University, K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, 9000, Gent, Belgium
Title of second keynote paper: New unconventional methods for estimating habitat quality: strengths and weaknesses

Contributed talks

Symposium description: The study of “habitat quality” is at the core of avian ecology and conservation. Just as birds need to respond to the right environmental cues when selecting their territories, avian ecologists strive to develop reliable indices of habitat quality, both from an evolutionary and a conservational perspective. Human activities have created a variety of habitats that may be preferred by species but where productivity is low. Such ecological traps have to be identified to avoid faulty conservation actions. In general, conservation biologists quantify habitat quality as the productivity per unit area of focal species; and a variety of indices of habitat quality have been used, from presence absence or density to recruitment of locally-born individuals. Even so, habitat-specific productivity is notoriously difficult to measure, especially for species with cryptic nesting habits.
We believe that the time is right to reexamine traditional indices of habitat quality and to develop new, accurate, and more time-efficient indices. Because such initiatives are unlikely to converge on a single, all-purpose index, this symposium aims to identify specific contexts for which particular indices are most appropriate. Speakers will address such challenges in estimating habitat quality, distinguishing ecological traps from truly productive habitat in the process.

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