Behavioural Landscape Ecology of Birds: Scaling-up from Individuals to Populations / Écologie comportementale et du paysage des oiseaux: de l'individu à la population

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My long-term research objective is to quantify the influence of landscape structure on the movement and distribution patterns of species and individuals. According to theory, both the composition and the configuration of landscapes determine the spatial distribution of resources (e.g., food and mates) and predation risk, which in turn affect the sampling, selection, and use of habitats by animals through movement. So far, empirical progress has been made with respect to how landscape structure, defined in terms of the size, shape and isolation of habitat patches, affects the distribution of species or individuals. Yet, poor attention has been given as to how the influence of landscape structure (as defined above) is mediated by the distribution of specific resources and the distribution of interacting species or individuals. This lack of knowledge is likely responsible for the current poor performance of landscape metrics at predicting key ecological processes acting at the landscape scale, such as dispersal and habitat selection. Over the next 5 years, my students and I will focus on the role of landscape structure, including the spatially-explicit distribution of resources, on the movement, habitat use, resource defence and mating of individual wild birds. For instance, we will quantify how the spatial distribution of vegetation types, topograhic features, such as forest gaps and edges, and of nectar sources affect territoriality and traplining in Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. We will also assess how travel costs imposed by forest influence dispersal in House Sparrows. Similarly, we will measure how the structure of agricultural landscapes constrains the spatial patterns of extra-pair mating in Tree Swallows. Lastly, we will build a state-space model to investigate how decisions rules utilized by foraging Greater Snow Geese and Ring-billed Gulls in response to landscape structure affects their movement patterns. The novelty and significance of my work lie in quantifying how spatially-explicit decisions made by organisms influence their movement and distribution patterns within a hierarchy of spatial scales.