Functional habitat suitability and urban encroachment explain temporal and spatial variations in abundance of a declining farmland bird, the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax

Abstract

Species response to land use can be examined under a functional perspective, where habitats are described according to species´ resource dependencies. Distribution or abundance models based on resource availability rather than land use types can be more informative about the ultimate processes behind observed population or distribution trends. Habitat use may depend on resources available, as well as disturbances that affect accessibility to such resources. Increasing human presence and urban encroachment may thus alter the relationships between habitat suitability and species abundance. Using 10 years of field data, we investigated whether variability in Little Bustard (<em>Tetrax tetrax</em>) abundance was explained by functional habitat suitability (assessed through resource-based models) and urban encroachment. We found that spatial and temporal variations in Little Bustard abundance were explained by functional habitat suitability and avoidance of urban areas, but that the significance of each variable varied with spatial scale. Little Bustard abundance at each observation point significantly increased with local nesting but not foraging habitat suitability, and decreased with increasing proportion of urban areas. At larger spatial scales, temporal changes in Little Bustard abundance were highly significantly related to changes in foraging habitat suitability. Moreover, the positive relationship between foraging habitat suitability and Little Bustard abundance weakened as the proportion of urban areas increased, and almost disappeared when the proportion of urban areas was more than 5%. Our results underline the benefits of using resource-based models to better understand processes that relate animal abundance and habitat suitability, while simultaneously considering avoided elements of the landscape.