Do habitat association models have any generality? Predicting skylark Alauda arvensis abundance in different regions of southern England

• Main Authors: Mark J. Whittingham, Jeremy D. Wilson, Paul F. Donald
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Alauda arvensis
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.490.9661; http://www.ncl.ac.uk/biology/assets/MWhitt_pdf/03Ecography.PDF

models have any generality? Predicting skylark Alauda arensis abundance in differ-ent regions of southern England. – Ecography 26: 521–531. Much of conservation science is based upon determining the use by organisms of different resources. However, the field data used to construct habitat association models generally come from a small number of sites covering a fraction of the area of interest. It is important therefore to assess the generality of those models for species occurring over large geographical areas. In this paper we test the generality of models describing skylark Alauda arensis abundance across farmland in southern England in relation to crop type, crop structure and field structure (i.e. height of surrounding boundaries). Skylarks responded to most predictors we measured in similar ways across three regions of differing farming practices (arable-dominated, pasture-dominated and a mixture of the two). Most of the regional differences in habitat associations could be related to differences in the speed of crop development. For example, the sowing of cereals in spring, a much lauded strategy to increase skylark populations, is likely to have less of an effect in regions where cereal