INDIVIDUAL ECOLOGY

Ecological systems are under increasing pressure from environmental change, including climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and increasing human populations. To understand the consequences of environmental change, to minimize adverse impacts, and to prioritize actions, conservation managers and policy-makers need to know how ecological systems will be affected. Despite this need, predicting the consequences of environmental change for biodiversity has remained a challenge for ecologists... The research overviewed on this site is designed to directly address this challenge. It views ecological populations as having properties (e.g., size, survival rate, age distribution, space use) that arise from the behaviour and interactions (e.g., decision rules, behaviour, physiology) of their constituent individuals. The main study species have been coastal and wetland birds (waders and wildfowl), but the approach can be applied to a much wider range of species... This site explains..

Primary location: Poole United Kingdom