Animal Space Use

The contrasting ideas of a single large or several small (SLOSS) habitat reserves ignited a heated debate in conservation biology (Diamond 1975; Simberloff and Abele 1982). The recent development in movement ecology – in particular the theoretical aspects of spatial memory and scale-free space use of individuals – makes time ripe to initiate a study of the SLOSS concept under this contemporary perspective. In order to produce realistic predictions community, population and individual processes need to be understood from a coherent system theory involving all levels of system abstraction. Under this premise the original SLOSS concept seems to fall apart. A single large reserve was argued to be preferable to several smaller reserves whose total areas were equal to the larger (Diamond 1975). On the other hand, if the smaller reserves had unshared species it was possible that two smaller reserves it sum could have more species than a single large reserve of the same total area (Simberlof