Habitat selection

Organisms evolving under aimual temperature cycles and in environments with varying temperatures spatially have incorporated thermal cues in reproductive behavior, habitat selection, and certain other features which act at the population level. Thus, the balance of births and mortaUties, which determines whether a species survives, is akin to the metaboHc balance at the physiological level in being dependent upon the match, within certain limits, to prescribed temperatures at different times of year. At the ecosystem level, relationships among species, eg, predators, competitors, prey animals, and plant foods, are related to environmental temperatures in complex ways. Many of these interactions are poorly understood. 

By necessity, herbivores have evolved GIT and systemic compensatory mechanisms that allow them to subsist on plant-based diets that have limited nutrient quality and include phytochemicals. Still, herbivores remain susceptible to some of the anti-nutrient and toxic phytochemicals. For example, several herbivores are sensitive to the phytotoxins associated with autumn crocus, which include colchicine (Yamada et al, 2000). As a consequence, herbivores tend to select species and portions of plants based on a combination of nutrient quality and concentrations of phytochemicals (Yeager et al, 1997), and this has an impact on habitat selection and plant ecology (Duncan and Gordon, 1999). Carnivorous species have not been under selective pressure to develop similar compensatory mechanisms, generally have only limited abilities to subsist on plant-based diets, and in many cases are less tolerant of phytochemicals. 

DUNCAN A J, GORDON IJ (1999) Habitat selection according to the ability of animals to eat, digest and detoxify foods. Proc Nutr Soc. 58 799-805. 

Aquatic animals use their chemical senses in all aspects of their lives, from reproductive behavior to feeding, habitat selection, and predator avoidance. The hydrodynamic properties determine the possibilities and limits of chemical communication in water. As a medium, water is as dynamic as air, so that convection and advection are far more important for odor transport than is diffusion. Distribution by currents is even more important in water because compounds of similar molecular weight diffuse four orders of magnitude more slowly than in air (Gleeson, 1978). Diffusion of odorants may be important only in the submillimeter range, while turbulence is typical for water masses above the centimeter range. 

Butman, C.A., Larval settlement of soft-sediment invertebrates the spatial scales of pattern explained by active habitat selection and the emerging role of hydrodynamic processes, Oceanogr. Mar. Biol. Ann. Rev., 25, 113, 1987. 

Krug, P.J. and Zimmer, R.K., Development dimorphism and expression of chemosensory-mediated behavior Habitat selection by a specialist marine herbivore, J. Exp. Biol., 203, 1741, 2000. 

Butman, C.A., and Grassle, J.P. (1992) Active habitat selection by Capitella-sp. I. larvae. Two-choice experiments in still water and flume flows. J. Mar. Res. 50, 669-715. 

Railsback SF, Harvey BC. 2002. Analysis of habitat-selection rules using an individual-based model. Ecology 83 1817-1830. 

Kolding S (1986) Interspecific competition for mates and habitat selection in five species of Gammarus (Amphipoda Crustacea). Mar Biol 91 491 195... 

Elkin C, Marshall DJ (2007) Desperate larvae the influence of deferred costs and habitat requirements on habitat selection. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 336 143-153... 

Jenkins SR (2005) Larval habitat selection, not larval supply, determines settlement patterns and adult distribution in two chthamalid barnacles. J Anim Ecol 74 893-904... 

Dublin, H. T. 1996. Elephants of the Masai Mara, Kenya seasonal habitat selection and group size patterns. Pachyderm, 22, 25—35. 

Keen, W. H., 1982, Habitat selection and interspecific competition in two species of plethodontid salamanders. Ecology, 63 94. 

Culberson, W. L., and C. F. Culberson Habitat Selection by Chemically Differentiated Races of Lichens. Science 158, 1195 (1967). 

Marsden, J.R., B.E. Conlin W. Hunte. 1990. Habitat selection in the tropical polychaete Spirobranchus giganteus. II. Larval preferences for corals. Mar. Biol. 104 93-99. 

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