Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The habitat is the basic unit for developments in life history, population dynamics, landscape ecology and conservation of organisms. It is frequently treated as a particulate, invariant and homogeneous entity (a patch). Here we examine the implications of using this concept of habitat in butterfly biology. In doing so, we suggest the alternative approach of applying a functional resource‐based concept of habitat. This recognises the fundamental requirements of organisms, consumables and utilities, the latter describing suitable environmental conditions as well as essential substrates. We argue that a resource‐based concept is critical for butterfly conservation and call for the development of a resource database on butterfly biology .
Dennis et al. (Fri,) studied this question.