How representative is a general model of structural landscape connectivity for bird functional groups in Alberta, Canada

Background/Question/Methods

Landscape connectivity can be defined as the degree to which a landscape facilitates the movement of organisms among resource patches. While connectivity is inherently species-specific, it is not feasible to model connectivity for all species, and land use planning in multifunctional landscapes cannot consider each species separately. As an alternative, a species-agnostic approach models structural landscape connectivity based on the degree of naturalness, without taking into account species traits. Such a model has recently been developed for the province of Alberta and validated with biodiversity monitoring data for various taxonomic groups. The model resulted in a raster map of current density as a proxy for ecological flow. The objective of the present study is to assess to what degree this species-agnostic connectivity model, based on current density, can represent species-specific habitat connectivity for different bird functional groups in Alberta, Canada. For this purpose, we converted species-specific habitat suitability models to resistance maps and modeled connectivity as current density at the species level.

Results/Conclusions

We found that current density was positively related to the abundances of bird species associated with the main ecosystems of a biome, including species of conservation concern, and negatively related to the abundance of generalist species or those associated with ecosystems that are rare within the biome. Trait-based analysis of the degree of overlap of species-specific current density map with the species-agnostic model shed further light on which functional groups are well represented by the provincial connectivity map and which groups need to be modeled separately. This clarification of the interpretation and applicability of a species-agnostic model will help inform land use planning.