Stochasticity as an alternative to deterministic explanations for patterns of habitat use by birds

---

Stochasticity is rarely explicitly investigated as a determinant of patterns of habitat use, even though evidence of its influence would undermine support for deterministic models of habitat selection. To assess the role of stochasticity in generating patterns in habitat use, we compared observed patterns of year-to-year variation in habitat use of 20 bird species over five years with patterns randomly generated from null models with different biological constraints (i.e., abundance, territoriality, exclusion of unused habitat, site fidelity, and habitat preference). The results of this study were published in Ecological Monographs (PDF).