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

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.