Search results for "Habitat lo"
showing 3 items of 13 documents
Increasing human environmental footprint does not lead to biotic homogenization of forest bird communities in northern USA
2023
Studies have shown negative impacts of increased human pressures on biodiversity at local (alpha-diversity) and regional (gamma-diversity) scales. However, the diversity between local sites (beta-diversity) has received less attention. This is an important shortcoming since beta- diversity acts as a linkage between the local and regional scales. Decreased beta- diversity means that local sites lose their distinctiveness, becoming more similar to each other. This process is known as biotic homogenization. However, the mechanisms causing biotic homogenization have not been fully studied nor its impacts on different facets of biodiversity. We examined if land- use change due to human actions c…
Contemporary spatial and environmental factors determine vascular plant species richness on highly fragmented meadows in Central Finland
2018
Context Habitat loss is a major threat to biodiversity. It can create temporal lags in decline of species in relation to destruction of habitat coverage. Plant species specialized in semi-natural grasslands, especially meadows, often express such extinction debt. Objectives We studied habitat loss and fragmentation of meadows and examined whether the changes in meadow coverage had caused an extinction debt on vascular plants. We also studied whether historical or present landscape patterns or contemporary environmental factors were more important determinants of species occurrence. Methods We surveyed the plant species assemblages of 12 grazed and 12 mown meadows in Central Finland and dete…
The temporal variation in Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans) population size
2011
Human land use causes declines of natural populations, for example, by loss of habitat area. Additionally, habitat fragmentation can cause the population size to decline more than is expected based on the area lost. Some ecological processes, such as demographic stochasticity and Allee effect, can expose already small populations to further decline. The endangered Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans) has suffered from intensive forestry in Finland. In this thesis I estimated the size and growth rate of a local flying squirrel population living in nest boxes in Alavus using 15-year mark-recapture data. I regressed the estimated population size against habitat availability to detect rel…