Conservation of Communities — The Importance of Edges, Surroundings and Landscape Mosaic Structure

摘要: The alteration, fragmentation, and finally loss, of natural habitats are the major causes increasingly rapid decline in overall biotic diversity on Earth (Burgess & Sharpe, 1981; Harris, 1984; Saunders et al., 1987). Usually effects measured as local, regional or irreversible loss species. For communities important processes, however, conditions may be altered long before any individual species actually disappear. From a conservation perspective this often means that even if all survive locally, their densities become reduced ecological situation changed due to different pattern interaction with surrounding environmental conditions. It therefore becomes meaningful distinguish among several types ‘extinctions’ such extinction functioning processes community, wild population is able maintain itself without man’s aid, managed subsidized population, captive individuals, genes characteristic given To solve problems one must consider not only dynamics target process, but also changes abiotic surroundings. This usually requires studies covering larger geographical areas than usual community studies, i.e. metapopulation landscape scale.