A neutral landscape approach to evaluating the umbrella species concept for greater sage-grouse in northeast Wyoming, USA

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) has been identified as a potential umbrella species with the assumption that conservation of their habitats in sagebrush ecosystems may benefit multiple other wildlife species, but co-occurrence with an umbrella species does not necessarily guarantee species will respond positively to management for sage-grouse. This may be particularly true for ecotones, such as at the eastern edge of the sage-grouse range where sagebrush steppe and Great Plains grasslands intersect. We used a novel application of neutral landscape models (Etherington et al., 2015) to evaluate observed and expected overlap between greater sage-grouse habitat (1994-2010; Fedy et al., 2014) and distribution...

Tags: Ecology, Monte Carlo simulation, Northeast Wyoming, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), United States of America, All tags... Wyoming, biogeography, biota, birds, community ecology, ecosystem monitoring, grassland ecosystems, grassland songbirds, habitat suitability indices, habitats, keystone species, mathematical simulation, migratory species, natural resource management, neutral landscape models, sagebrush, shrubland ecosystems, species co-occurrence, umbrella species, Fewer tags