doi: 10.1111/ecog.03621 42 187–200 ECOGRAPHY Research The importance of spatial scale in habitat selection World in a human-dominated Ecology by European beaver Adrian Zwolicki, Rafał Pudełko, Katarzyna Moskal, Joanna Świderska, Szymon Saath and Agata Weydmann A. Zwolicki (http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2710-681X) (
[email protected]), K. Moskal, J. Świderska and S. Saath, Univ. of Gdańsk, Dept of Vertebrate Ecology and Zoology, Gdańsk, Poland. – A. Weydmann, Univ. of Gdańsk, Inst. of Oceanography, Gdynia, Poland. AZ and AW also at: AZB analysis and software, Gdynia, Poland. – R. Pudełko, Inst. of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation State Research Inst., Dept of Bioeconomy and Systems Analysis, Puławy, Poland. Ecography We evaluated habitat selection by European beaver Castor fiber L. across a spatial gra- 42: 187–200, 2019 dient from local (within the family territory) to a broad, ecoregional scale. Based on doi: 10.1111/ecog.03621 aerial photography, we assessed the habitat composition of 150 beaver territories along the main water bodies of the Vistula River delta (northern Poland) and compared these Subject Editor: Douglas A. Kelt data with 183 randomly selected sites not occupied by the species. The beavers pre- Editor-in-Chief: ferred habitats with high availability of woody plants, including shrubs, and avoided Jens-Christian Svenning anthropogenically modified habitats, such as arable lands. Within a single family terri- Accepted 8 August 2018 tory, we observed decreasing woody plant cover with increasing distance from a colony centre, which suggests that beaver habitat preferences depend on the assessment of both the abundance and spatial distribution of preferred habitat elements.