Relationships between abundances of breeding ducks and attributes of Canadian prairie wetlands. (2nd August 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bartzen, Blake; Dufour, Kevin W.; Bidwell, Mark T.; Watmough, Michael D.; Clark, Robert G.
• Is Part Of: Wildlife Society bulletin. Volume 41:Number 3(2017)
• Page Start: 416
• Page End: 423
• Publication Date: 2017-08-02
• Subjects: abundance -- ducks -- pond area -- population -- Prairie Canada -- predictive models -- wetlands; Wildlife management -- Periodicals; Wildlife conservation -- Periodicals; 333.9540973
• DOI: 10.1002/wsb.794
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0091-7648

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Understanding how animals respond to changing habitat conditions can improve predictions about effects of environmental change and also inform conservation planning. We examined relationships between abundances of 5 common dabbling duck species breeding in the Canadian Prairie Pothole Region and basic wetland metrics. Pond area was a well‐supported predictor of duck abundance at the local scale of pond. Relationships for all 5 species varied with their respective regional duck and pond densities. In regions where duck densities were high, there were more ducks per pond; conversely, there were fewer ducks per pond in regions where pond densities were high, indicating that mechanisms influencing local habitat use were, in part, mediated by processes occurring at larger spatial scales. Although models explained small amounts of variation of duck abundance on a per pond basis, these models explained more variation when results were aggregated to the level of survey segment, indicating reasonable performance of models for estimating duck abundance over specific areas with known pond areas. Our results also indicated that the greatest increase in duck abundance with increasing pond size occurs at the low end of the range of pond sizes. It is relatively small wetlands that face the greatest threat of loss and degradation on the prairies; therefore, protection and conservation efforts need to focus on these wetlands if the objective is to increase or maintain populations of the duck species studied. © 2017 The Wildlife Society. Abstract : We developed models based on basic wetland metrics to predict abundances of 5 common dabbling duck species in Prairie Canada. Pond area was a well‐supported predictor of duck abundances at the local scale of pond with the relationship between pond area and duck abundances varying at larger regional scales.