查看文章

Confronted with threats of habitat loss and climate change, birds that inhabit open-lands such as grasslands and shrublands are among the most rapidly declining groups of birds across North America. One such bird is the Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus; hereafter bobwhite) which inhabits heterogeneous landscapes that typically consist of shrubland, grassland, and early-successional forests. Bobwhites are declining at an alarming rate across most of their range, largely due to habitat loss from intense production agriculture. Populations along the northern periphery of bobwhite range are secondarily imperiled by high mortality from severe winter weather. Because bobwhites are a socially and economically important gamebird, there has been great interest from a variety of stakeholders to maintain suitable habitat and promote sustainable populations. As a result of the conservation attention they receive, bobwhite conservation has the potential to benefit non-target songbirds with similar land cover requirements. The umbrella species concept suggests that benefits will accrue to non-target species if viable bobwhite populations are maintained through habitat conservation. The future viability of bobwhite populations is in question in Ohio, so a comprehensive demographic study is needed to estimate probability of population persistence under a variety of future weather and population viability analysis (PVA) scenarios. The first part of my thesis focuses on landscape-scale characteristics that influence bobwhite occupancy in Ohio, and whether occupancy by other open-land species is positively predicted by bobwhite occupancy. The …