Oro Daniel
Population Ecology Group, Institut Mediterrani d'Estudis Avançats IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB), Miquel Marques 21, 07190 Esporles, Mallorca, Spain.
Ecology. 2008 Mar;89(3):838-46. doi: 10.1890/06-1936.1.
Merging patterns and processes about the way individuals should be distributed in a habitat is a key issue in the framework of spatial ecology. Here the despotic distribution of individuals in two distinct and neighboring patches within a local population of a long-lived colonial bird, the Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis), was assessed. There was no density dependence for suitable habitat at the study population, but behavioral data suggested that birds from the good patch precluded birds from the bad patch from breeding in their patch. Younger breeders were almost exclusively found in the bad patch, where individuals were probably attracted by conspecific attraction from the good patch. Most breeding parameters were lower in the bad patch, resulting mainly from a higher vulnerability to environmental perturbations and a higher rate of intraspecific nest predation. Attempts at breeding dispersal between the two patches were only observed from the bad to the good patch. Strikingly, adult survival and large-scale dispersal, two life history parameters that are very conservative in long-lived organisms, were also more affected at the bad patch when catastrophic predation occurred. The study was consistent with an ideal despotic distribution at small spatial scale, and suggests that individual behavior can influence local population dynamics.
关于个体在栖息地中分布方式的合并模式和过程是空间生态学框架中的一个关键问题。在此，对一种长寿群居鸟类黄腿鸥（Larus michahellis）当地种群内两个不同且相邻斑块中个体的专制分布进行了评估。在研究种群中，适宜栖息地不存在密度依赖性，但行为数据表明，来自优质斑块的鸟类阻止了来自劣质斑块的鸟类在其斑块内繁殖。较年轻的繁殖者几乎只在劣质斑块中被发现，在那里个体可能受到来自优质斑块的同种吸引。劣质斑块中的大多数繁殖参数较低，这主要是由于对环境干扰的更高脆弱性和种内巢捕食率较高所致。仅观察到有从劣质斑块到优质斑块的繁殖扩散尝试。引人注目的是，当发生灾难性捕食时，成年个体存活率和大规模扩散这两个在长寿生物中非常保守的生活史参数，在劣质斑块中也受到了更大影响。该研究与小空间尺度上的理想专制分布一致，并表明个体行为可影响当地种群动态。
