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Type: Review Article
Published: 2014-04-18
Page range: 1-32
Abstract views: 191
PDF downloaded: 109

Ten years of the resource-based habitat paradigm: the biotope-habitat issue and implications for conserving butterfly diversity

Ph. D, DSc, (Professor), Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxon, UNITED KINGDOM
Department of Biological and Medical Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX30BP, UK
Institute for Environment, Sustainability and Regeneration, Staffordshire University, Mellor Building, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DE, UK
Biodiversity biotope climate change dispersal ecotone extinction generalism-specialism geographical range habitat migration population speciation.

Abstract

The widely used term ‘habitat’ underlies all aspects of a species’ (and community’s) population size, consequently population changes, distribution and range size and changes; ultimately, habitat parameters determine the status of species, whether thriving or threatened with extinction. Habitat parameters also lie at the root of species’ evolution (speciation) involving cycles of resource specialism/generalism. A basic problem is that habitat has long been treated as synonymous with biotope. But, the two variable terms habitat and biotope describe very different phenomena and we make a case for clarity in the use of the term ‘habitat’, especially when the focus is conserving biodiversity. In this review, in reference to butterflies, we distinguish habitat from biotope as a real, grounded resources-based and conditions-based entity, and explain how usage of the terms greatly affects our perception of population status, and of population, distribution, range and speciation processes, central to conserving biodiversity.