Smarter habitat restoration in harmony with species reintroductions- testing solutions for the Chequered Skipper

与物种重新引入相协调的更智能的栖息地恢复 - 格纹船长的测试解决方案

• 批准号: 2274903
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Liverpool
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2274903
• 关键词: Smarter; habitat; restoration; harmony; species

Habitat loss and degradation remain major threats to species around the world, yet habitat restoration is also enjoying significant success in places. Habitat restoration can go hand-in-hand with the re-introduction of species, and both tactics may be increasingly needed under climate change. However, re-introductions are costly, and quite prone to failure, even with well-studied vertebrate species. If we could develop relatively simple and transferrable methods to assess whether habitat networks are suitable for a species, we will could greatly expand the numbers and types of species that could be considered for re-introduction. This could particularly benefit invertebrates, which are rich and influential components of ecosystems, but relatively understudied.The Chequered Skipper is a flagship butterfly species which went extinct from England in the mid-20th century, likely due to modification of its habitat. Elsewhere in northern Europe, it persists on damp grassland habitats at woodland edges. This specific vegetation structure would not traditionally have been mapped in habitat inventories, but new techniques for remote sensing make it much easier to detect the key combinations of variables that are needed by a particular species. Furthermore, such techniques can more easily be extended to almost any species. Butterfly Conservation are performing re-introductions of Chequered Skipper in the species' last known stronghold, where habitat has recently been restored. This project aims to inform the current and future re-introductions of Chequered Skipper, improving their success by ensuring that the habitat is sufficient for populations to grow and spread over the landscape. By trialling novel and low-cost methods of predicting habitat suitability, we will also provide a model system upon which future introductions of other species can be based.Our objectives are to:1. Understand the key habitat factors that promote Chequered Skipper population growth and persistence. This will be achieved by combining available data from monitoring schemes in northern Europe with remotely-sensed habitat properties and some field validation.2. Understand Chequered Skipper spatial population structure and determine the minimum area of habitat needed to support a population or several linked populations. This will be achieved by observations of movement behaviour and inference from the presence/absence of Chequered Skipper in habitat networks of different sizes. We will also investigate genetic approaches to show how neighbouring populations are functionally linked.3. Predict whether habitat (un)suitability would limit the survival and spread of re-introduced chequered skippers in England, and test whether habitat loss explains the Chequered Skipper's extinction in England in the mid-20th century.

栖息地丧失和退化仍然是世界各地物种的主要威胁，但栖息地恢复也在一些地方取得了重大成功。栖息地的恢复可以与物种的重新引入齐头并进，在气候变化的情况下，这两种策略可能越来越需要。然而，重新引入是昂贵的，而且很容易失败，即使是研究充分的脊椎动物物种。如果我们能够开发出相对简单和可移植的方法来评估栖息地网络是否适合一个物种，我们将可以大大增加可以考虑重新引入的物种的数量和类型。这可能特别有利于无脊椎动物，它们是生态系统中丰富和有影响力的组成部分，但相对而言研究不足。方格旗蝶是一种旗舰蝴蝶物种，在世纪中期从英格兰灭绝，可能是由于其栖息地的改变。在北方欧洲的其他地方，它在林地边缘的潮湿草原栖息地生存。这种特定的植被结构传统上不会在生境清单中绘制，但新的遥感技术使其更容易检测特定物种所需的变量的关键组合。此外，这种技术可以更容易地扩展到几乎任何物种。蝴蝶保护组织正在该物种最后一个已知的据点重新引入方格船长，那里的栖息地最近已经恢复。该项目旨在为目前和未来的重新引入Chequered Skipper提供信息，通过确保栖息地足以让种群在景观中生长和传播来提高其成功率。通过试验新的和低成本的方法来预测栖息地的适宜性，我们也将提供一个模型系统，在未来的其他物种的引进可以基于。了解促进格子鲷种群增长和持久性的关键栖息地因素。这将通过将来自北方监测计划的现有数据与遥感生境特性和一些实地验证相结合来实现。了解格子船长的空间种群结构，并确定支持一个种群或几个相连种群所需的最小栖息地面积。这将通过观察运动行为并根据不同大小的栖息地网络中Chequered Skipper的存在/不存在进行推断来实现。我们还将研究遗传方法，以显示相邻种群在功能上是如何联系的。预测栖息地（不）适合性是否会限制英格兰重新引入的方格船长的生存和传播，并测试栖息地的丧失是否解释了20世纪中叶方格船长在英格兰的灭绝。世纪。