Habitat Loss and Population Decline: A Meta-Analysis of the Patch Size Effect

We evaluated the conditions under which patch size effects are important determinants of local population density for animals living in patchy landscapes. This information was used to predict when patch size effects will be expected to occur following habitat loss and fragmentation. Using meta-analysis, we quantitatively reviewed the results of 25 published studies that tested for a relationship between patch size and population density. Patch size effects were strong for edge and interior species (negative and postive patch size effects, respectively), but negligible for generalist species that use both edge and interior habitat. We found significant differences in mean patch size effects between migratory and residential species, between herbivores and carnivores, and among taxonomic groups. We found no evidence that patch size effects were related to landscape characteristics such as the proportion of landscape covered by habitat, median patch size, or the scale at which a study was conducted. However, species in the Western Hemisphere tended to have larger absolute effect sizes, and eastern species tended to be more variable in their response. For landscapes undergoing habitat loss and fragmentation, our results predict the following: (1) among generalist species that use both the edge and the interior of a habitat patch, the decline in population size associated with habitat destruction should be accounted for by pure habitat loss alone; (2) for interior species, the decline in population size associated with habitat fragmentation per se will be greater than that predicted from pure habitat loss alone; (3) for edge species, the decline in population size will be less than that predicted by pure habitat loss alone; (4) these relative effects will not be influenced by the extent of habitat loss, but they will be affected by the pattern of habitat when large or small patches are preferentially removed; and (5) as loss and fragmentation increase within a landscape, migratory species will generally suffer less of a decline in population size than resident species.