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Abstract
Purpose of Review
The contemporary rate of environmental change is faster than ever recorded. Wildlife will need to acclimate or adapt habitat selection strategies to persist in the face of rapid natural and anthropogenic change. We reviewed primary literature on cumulative effects and habitat selection frameworks that link to functional response. Our primary goal was to highlight how functional response to habitat selection can fit into current approaches that assess wildlife response to landscape disturbance including model structure, disturbance type, and spatiotemporal scales.
Recent Findings
Both functional response to habitat selection and cumulative effects assessment endeavor to capture how wildlife alter their space use across a changing landscape over time. These two methods are seldom used in combination, but together can quantify behavioral responses that may change as a function of accumulating disturbances. Most studies we reviewed included multiple measures of anthropogenic disturbance, but rarely considered how the interaction between separate disturbances may influence wildlife response.
Summary
We propose integrating functional response to habitat selection and cumulative effects using resource selection functions. We identify three avenues to further expand the use of this application: (A) considering different types of cumulative effects and their interactions, (B) predicting responses over space and time, and (C) using thresholds as a path to understand biological mechanisms. Allowing disturbance responses to covary as a function of resource availability will provide meaningful comparisons of habitat selection and aid in disentangling cumulative effects interactions.