Although habitat studies have long been conducted within Ecology, I think ecologists still underappreciate the importance of habitat in determining the spatial distribution and abundances (population sizes) of species. So, for a given species, we can learn a lot about where it should exist in nature and perhaps predict population size (within reasonable bounds) if we can obtain better knowledge about its habitat requirements and preferences. This obviously has huge consequences for species conservation given that habitat destruction is the number one cause of population declines and extinction … and preservation of habitat (including active management) is often the main solution to preventing declines and extinction.

I have broad research interests related to the study of species-habitat relationships and putting knowledge of such relationships into conservation action. These interests include basic studies of habitat associations as well as spatially-explicit (as in GIS) modelling of habitat.

Note: I’ve recently published a book, Habitat Ecology and Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2021), that further discusses the importance of habitat and describes methods of analyzing species habitat associations.