Hale Robin, Swearer Stephen E
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia
School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia.
Proc Biol Sci. 2016 Feb 10;283(1824). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.2647.
Ecological traps, which occur when animals mistakenly prefer habitats where their fitness is lower than in other available habitats following rapid environmental change, have important conservation and management implications. Empirical research has focused largely on assessing the behavioural effects of traps, by studying a small number of geographically close habitat patches. Traps, however, have also been defined in terms of their population-level effects (i.e. as preferred habitats of sufficiently low quality to cause population declines), and this is the scale most relevant for management. We systematically review the ecological traps literature to (i) describe the geographical and taxonomic distribution of efforts to study traps, (ii) examine how different traps vary in the strength of their effects on preference and fitness, (iii) evaluate the robustness of methods being used to identify traps, and (iv) determine whether the information required to assess the population-level consequences of traps has been considered. We use our results to discuss key knowledge gaps, propose improved methods to study traps, and highlight fruitful avenues for future research.
生态陷阱是指在快速的环境变化之后，动物错误地偏好那些适合度低于其他可用栖息地的栖息地，这具有重要的保护和管理意义。实证研究主要集中在通过研究少数地理上相近的栖息地斑块来评估陷阱的行为影响。然而，陷阱也根据其种群水平的影响来定义（即作为质量足够低以至于导致种群数量下降的首选栖息地），而这是与管理最相关的尺度。我们系统地回顾了生态陷阱的文献，以（i）描述研究陷阱的努力在地理和分类学上的分布，（ii）研究不同陷阱对偏好和适合度的影响强度如何变化，（iii）评估用于识别陷阱的方法的稳健性，以及（iv）确定是否考虑了评估陷阱对种群水平影响所需的信息。我们利用研究结果来讨论关键的知识空白，提出改进的陷阱研究方法，并突出未来研究的富有成效的途径。
