Thorsten Wiegand

Identification of 100 fundamental ecological questions

Summary 1. Fundamental ecological research is both intrinsically interesting and provides the basic knowledge required to answer applied questions of importance to the management of the natural world. The 100th anniversary of the British Ecological Society in 2013 is an opportune moment to reflect on the current status of ecology as a science and look forward to high-light priorities for future work.

Finding the Missing Link between Landscape Structure and Population Dynamics: A Spatially Explicit Perspective

We construct and explore a general modeling framework that allows for a systematic investigation of the impact of changes in landscape structure on population dynamics. The essential parts of the framework are a landscape generator with independent control over landscape composition and physiognomy, an individual‐based spatially explicit population model that simulates population dynamics within heterogeneous landscapes, and scale‐dependent landscape indices that depict the essential aspects of landscape that interact with dispersal and demographic processes. Landscape maps are represented by a grid of \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

Statistical inference for stochastic simulation models – theory and application

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Statistical inference for stochastic simulations models : theory and application

\end{document} cells and consist of good‐quality, poor‐quality, or uninhabitable matrix habitat cells. The population model was shaped in accordance to the biology of European brown bears (Ursus arctos), and demographic parameters were adjusted to yield a source‐sink configuration. Results obtained with the spatially explicit model do not confirm results of earlier nonspatial source‐sink models where addition of sink habitat resulted in a decrease of total population size because of dilution of high‐quality habitat. Our landscape indices, which describe scale‐dependent correlation between and within habitat types, were able to explain variations in variables of population dynamics (mean number of females with sink home ranges, mean number of females with source home ranges, and mean dispersal distance) caused by different landscape structure. When landscape structure changed, changes in these variables generally followed the corresponding change of an appropriate landscape index in a linear way. Our general approach incorporates source‐sink dynamics as well as metapopulation dynamics, and the population model can easily be modified for other species groups.

RULE-BASED ASSESSMENT OF SUITABLE HABITAT AND PATCH CONNECTIVITY FOR THE EURASIAN LYNX

We used point pattern analysis to examine the spatial distribution of 46 common tree species (diameter at breast height >10 cm) in a fully mapped \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

Individual movement behavior, matrix heterogeneity, and the dynamics of spatially structured populations

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