News and views on wildlife corridors, linkages, and connectivity
on Aug 02 2011
Paul Beier and Andy Gregory of Northern Arizona University are looking for real live wildlife corridors, and will pay $250 if your suggested site is used in their upcoming study. They plan on testing, on a global scale, two questions:
Here's a description of what they're looking for. If you have a site, check out their site, Do Corridors Work, now!
We (Paul Beier and Andy Gregory) need your help to find study sites at which we can assess the ability of big corridors (the sort of corridors typically proposed as conservation interventions) to promote long-term gene flow. Many studies have demonstrated that short linear features promote animal movement over short distances when the area outside the corridor is relatively natural, but we are interested in corridors over a half-mile long embedded in urban, row crop, or industrial areas. And we don’t want to measure success in terms of movement of individual animals; instead we will measure success in terms of long-term gene flow. Thus we need landscapes that have been stable for 20 to 50 years – long enough that the pattern of corridors and patches will have affected genetic patterns. We seek about 100 landscapes (each with 1 or more corridors) for our study, and we will study landscapes on all continents. We need many landscapes because doubtless some corridors provide gene flow across human-dominated areas, and other corridors fail to do so. With a large sample, we can identify what traits are associated with successful corridors.
Although we are highly selective about what landscapes we will study, we will study any reptile, amphibian, mammal, flightless arthropod, or sedentary bird that is likely to be found in the corridor, but not in the human-dominated matrix.