Scale dependence in habitat selection: the case of the endangered brown bear Ursus arctos in the Cantabrian Range NW Spain

摘要: Animals select habitat resources at multiple spatial scales. Thus, explicit attention to scale dependency in species–habitat relationships is critical understand the suitability patterns as perceived by organisms complex landscapes. Identification of scales which particular environmental variables influence selection may be important themselves. In this study, we combined bivariate scaling and Maximum entropy Maxent modeling investigate multiscale endangered brown bear Ursus arctos populations northwest Spain. Bivariate showed that strength apparent was highly sensitive predictor are evaluated. models on optimal for each variable suggested landscape composition together with human disturbances dominant drivers selection, while configuration edge effects were substantially less influential. We found explicitly optimizing considerably improved single-scale terms model performance prediction. represent cumulative across a broad range scales, from local within patches broader