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Bobwhite quail paired with the Lande Metapopulation Model from the book A/12e (Anthropocene 12 equations).

The Northern Bobwhite evolved over two million years ago, expanding across North America’s grasslands and early-successional ecosystems. Long before European colonization, Indigenous land stewardship and natural fire cycles created a mosaic of meadows, brushlands, and open forests where the bobwhite thrived. Native people admired how the bobwhites slept in a tight outward facing circle as a form of protection and unity. Starting in the mid-20th century, rapid suburban expansion, industrial agriculture, and forest succession fragmented these habitats in the Northeast US and now there are few wild bobwhites left though many farm raised bobwhites are released each year for hunting they are unable to survive in the wild. The Lande Metapopulation Model with Habitat Loss was created by biologist Russell Lande in 1987 to demonstrate how habitat destruction drives species to local extinction thresholds. The equation shows that the proportion of occupied habitat patches (p*) equals the remaining available habitat (1 – D) minus the ratio of local extinction rate to colonization rate (e/c). Lande’s equation illustrates that when habitat destruction (D) passes a critical limit, a population collapses even if small patches of suitable habitat remain empty.

The bobwhite was photographed at the RISD Nature Lab, many thanks for providing this resource.