Context Climate and land-use change have led to disturbance regimes in many ecosystems without a historical analog, leading to uncertainty about how species adapted to past conditions will respond to novel post-disturbance landscapes. Objectives We examined habitat selection by spotted owls in a post-fire landscape. We tested whether selection or avoidance of severely burned areas could be explained by patch size or configuration, and whether variation in selection among individuals could be explained by differences in habitat availability. Methods We applied mixed-effects models to GPS data from 20 spotted owls in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA, with individual owls occupying home ranges spanning a broad range of post-fire conditions after the 2014 King Fire. Results Individual spotted owls whose home ranges experienced less severe fire (< 5% of home range severely burned) tended to select severely burned forest, but owls avoided severely burned forest when more of their home range was affected (~ 5–40%). Owls also tended to select severe fire patches that were smaller in size and more complex in shape, and rarely traveled > 100-m into severe fire patches. Spotted owls avoided areas that had experienced post-fire salvage logging but the interpretation of this effect was nuanced. Owls also avoided areas that were classified as open and/or young forest prior to the fire. Conclusions Our results support the hypothesis that spotted owls are adapted to historical fire regimes characterized by small severe fire patches in this region. Shifts in disturbance regimes that produce novel landscape patterns characterized by large, homogeneous patches of high-severity fire may negatively affect this species.

中文翻译：

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大火灾后斑点猫头鹰的栖息地选择反映了它们对历史频繁火灾制度的适应

背景 气候和土地利用变化导致了许多生态系统中没有历史类比的扰动机制，导致对适应过去条件的物种将如何对新的扰动后景观做出反应的不确定性。目标我们检查了火灾后景观中斑点猫头鹰的栖息地选择。我们测试了选择或避免严重烧毁区域是否可以通过斑块大小或配置来解释，以及是否可以通过栖息地可用性的差异来解释个体之间选择的差异。方法 我们将混合效应模型应用于来自美国加利福尼亚州内华达山脉的 20 只斑点猫头鹰的 GPS 数据，在 2014 年 King Fire 之后，个别猫头鹰占据了跨越广泛火灾后条件的家庭范围。结果 栖息地范围较轻的个别斑点猫头鹰 (< 5% 的家庭范围严重烧毁）倾向于选择严重烧毁的森林，但当更多家庭范围受到影响时，猫头鹰会避免严重烧毁的森林（~5-40%）。猫头鹰还倾向于选择尺寸更小、形状更复杂的严重火灾斑块，并且很少进入超过 100 米的严重火灾斑块。斑点猫头鹰避开了经历过火灾后打捞伐木的地区，但对这种影响的解释是细微的。猫头鹰还避开了火灾前被归类为开放和/或幼林的区域。结论我们的研究结果支持斑点猫头鹰适应以该地区小规模严重火灾斑块为特征的历史火灾状况的假设。干扰机制的变化产生了新的景观模式，其特征是大的，