Editorial: Linking Habitat Quality to Population Dynamics for Conservation Decision Making

David R Breininger ^1* Doug P Armstrong ² James Nichols ³ Robert C Lacy ⁴

• ¹ University of Central Florida, Orlando, United States
• ² College of Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu-Wanganui, New Zealand
• ³ University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
• ⁴ Chicago Zoological Society, Brookfield, Illinois, United States

Natural and anthropogenic factors alter habitats so that trends, random sampling, or single snapshots of habitat conditions often do not predict future species abundance (Kunegel-Lion et al. 2022, Conquet et al. 2023). Habitat dynamics are measured at different spatial scales (e.g., landscape, management units, patch, territory) and are asynchronous and driven by climate change, disturbances, invasive species, and habitat management.Endangered species recovery plans and species status assessments have requirements to address time to population recovery, but they often do not adequately address habitat dynamics and factors that led to endangerment (Auld andKeith 2009, Shirey et al. 2022). Understanding how habitat dynamics influence population dynamics is necessary for making sound conservation decisions.Examples across a range of species, habitat and actions are important to facilitate decision making (Runge 2011). From literature reviews, we found 160 individuals as potential authors and invited them to contribute, leading to 9 manuscripts. Below we summarize these studies and related literature to describe improvements to support conservation decision making.Nichols et al. introduced Structured Decision Making (SDM) and Adaptive Resource Management (ARM) topics used in natural resource management and a framework to combine population and habitat variables in a statistical likelihood approach. Our view of habitat conditions was broad, for example including human disturbance as a factor that altered habitat suitability (e.g., Martin et al. 2011) Monitoring provides fantastic opportunities for learning and is often a regulatory requirement used in 75 negotiation, but its implementation to make better decisions is often not well developed (Yoccoz et 76 al. 2001, Nichols and Williams 2006, Nichols and Armstrong 2012). We suggest monitoring should 77 address the 4 major reasons for monitoring to support decision-making described this volume 78 Nichols et al. We suggest applications increase collaboration among population biologists, 79 geneticists, field biologist, managers, stakeholders, and habitat modeling experts. 80