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Gamma Theory

Modern Wild Faunal Resource Management
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Cross Currents: Species and Life Groups

 There are many papers on the meaning of a species. The different species, grossly speaking, have been the emphasis of past studies and management efforts. The game manager or wildlife manager has managed deer, bobwhite quail, and the wild turkey. Other managers have sought to manage species of songbirds but have run into the problem of the enormous number of species. They grouped them into guilds, groups with similar feeding behaviors such as canopy feeders, bark or bole feeders, ground feeders. They soon realized that the management steps taken for one species within a guild did not have correlated effects on the other species. The guild idea did not work for the manager, but it had limited interest for others. The guild concept rejected species management and sought to aggregate or group species.

The life group concept for the manager recognizes a managerial unit smaller than the species. It goes in the reverse direction of the guild lumper.

The life group is an animal of a species with managerially significant requirements that differ from other life groups of that species. A turkey poult is a insectivore, significantly different in size, shape, behavior, and foraging patterns than an adult. The life group animals are often more different than others in the same species than they differ from other species.

The manager manages the life group, not just the species. To manage for the species is to over generalize.

Examples of life groups are insect instars; eggs, chicks, and adults; salamander life stages; the lactating female deer.

Perhaps life form might have been a better name for the concept but that phrase has been used by others to describe habitat conditions.

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Last revision January 17, 2000.