Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Phytochemistry Predicts Habitat Selection By An Avian Herbivore At Multiple Spatial Scales, Graham G. Frye, John W. Connelly, David D. Musil, Jennifer S. Forbey
Phytochemistry Predicts Habitat Selection By An Avian Herbivore At Multiple Spatial Scales, Graham G. Frye, John W. Connelly, David D. Musil, Jennifer S. Forbey
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Animal habitat selection is a process that functions at multiple, hierarchically structured spatial scales. Thus multi-scale analyses should be the basis for inferences about factors driving the habitat selection process. Vertebrate herbivores forage selectively on the basis of phytochemistry, but few studies have investigated the influence of selective foraging (i.e., fine-scale habitat selection) on habitat selection at larger scales. We tested the hypothesis that phytochemistry is integral to the habitat selection process for vertebrate herbivores. We predicted that habitats selected at three spatial scales would be characterized by higher nutrient concentrations and lower concentrations of plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) than …