The Influence of Habitat Quality on Dispersal, Demography, and Population Dynamics of Voles

Abstract

We compared the effects of habitat quality on dispersal, demography, dynamics, and fitness of prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) and meadow vole (M. pennsylvanicus) populations by manipulating habitat patches in experimental landscapes. Four habitat patches in each of four replicate landscapes differed in availability of high-quality food and amount of vegetative cover in a 2 ϫ 2 factorial design. High cover had a strong positive effect on basic habitat quality, as reflected by the performance of founders early in the season, but supplemental food had only a small effect.Population growth ceased for prairie voles after week 18 (mid-October) when densities had reached much higher levels in habitats with high cover (260 Ϯ 27 voles/ha in high cover with either high or low food; mean Ϯ 1 SE) than in habitats with low cover (115 Ϯ 38 voles/ha in high food, low cover and 60 Ϯ 15 voles/ha in low food, low cover). Population growth had ceased in three habitat types for meadow voles by week 20 at much higher densities than for prairie voles in high cover (636 Ϯ 101 voles/ha with high food, high cover; 556 Ϯ 117 voles/ha with low food, high cover; 110 Ϯ 74 voles/ha with high food, low cover; and 51 Ϯ 16 voles/ ha with low food, low cover).Correlates of fitness for prairie voles, particularly the number of young surviving to adulthood per female, indicated greater individual fitness in high cover than in low cover, which suggests ideal despotic habitat selection. The proportion of the total population found in habitat patches with high cover continued to increase until prairie vole populations stabilized late in the season. This result did not agree with expectations of either the ideal free model or the ideal despotic model of habitat selection. Fitness differed little for meadow voles in different habitat types, and the proportions of the populations in different habitats remained constant after the founders had settled and population growth began. Both of these patterns supported the ideal free model of habitat selection for meadow voles.Because positive net recruitment occurred in all habitats for both species of voles, source-sink dynamics could not occur in our experimental system. Two subpopulations of meadow voles in low-food, low-cover habitats did go extinct temporarily, but this habitat type did not appear to be a population sink because the losses occurred primarily from emigration rather than mortality. Emigration rates for both species of voles were inversely related to carrying capacity of the habitat (estimated as the density at which populations stabilized). This relationship and ideal free habitat selection are required by the balanced dispersal model, which produces equal numbers of dispersers between a pair of habitat types. Dispersal of meadow voles was balanced throughout the growing season, but dispersal of prairie voles was unbalanced, with net movement of individuals from lowquality to high-quality habitats until late in the season when populations stabilized. Unbalanced dispersal early in the seas...

Habitat–performance relationships: finding the right metric at a given spatial scale

“…Furthermore, the most heavily used or selected habitat types are not necessarily the habitat associated with the highest individual fitness. Likewise, although some measures of carrying capacity, such as density after population growth has ceased, have been shown to correlate positively with recruitment (see Lin & Batzli 2001 for a study case on voles), carrying capacity should not be used in general to assess the relative value of a given habitat type, as recently shown for black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis; Morgan et al 2009 Another approach for studying habitat quality is to test for a difference in fitness associated with sites at which habitat features differ. For example, Wightman & Fuller (2006) found that nest sites with certain habitat characteristics were used more consistently by peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) than sites with other characteristics, and that through time the sites that were used most consistently were associated with higher, less variable productivity than other sites.…”

Reversal of fortune: plant suppression and recovery after vole herbivory

“…Contingent foraging decisions may mean that relationships between voles and particular plant species diVer in important ways under diVerent conditions (see Bonsall et al 2003). Vole populations at any given time reXect food distributions in habitats where the rodents have suYcient cover (Lin and Batzli 2001;see Howe and Brown 1999), but foods quite likely diVer from place to place. In an exclosure experiment in Illinois, for instance, voles devastated plantings that presented the animals with much higher densities of palatable species than normally exist in nature (Howe et al 2002, and strongly aVected succession in early years of the present experiment in Wisconsin (Howe and Lane 2004).…”

Socio-Ecological Disruptions at Critical Periods During Development Alter Stress Responses and Hippocampal Dendritic Morphology of Prairie Voles: Implications for Social Monogamy

“…Voles are underground burrowers that occupy a variety of habitats including ungrazed pastures, hay fields, and alfalfa fields (Cole and Batzli, 1979;Mankin and Getz, 1994). They prefer to live in areas of thick rather than sparse vegetation; they use vegetation as both food and cover (Lin and Batzli, 2001). They are more likely to disperse from areas of no vegetative cover (Lin et al, 2006).…”