Our research was conducted within large-scale, experimental
patches and corridors at the Savannah River
National Environmental Research Park, near Aiken,
South Carolina, USA. Patches and corridors were earlysuccessional
vegetation and were created by harvesting
pine trees within large pine plantations. The experiment
consisted of 27 128 3 128 m open patches (1.64 ha),
some of which were connected by a 32 m wide, open
corridor that varied in length from 64 to 384 m (Fig.
1). These patch sizes were chosen because they are
large enough to prevent shading of the entire patch by
surrounding trees, and because they match the scale of
movement of many of the study organisms. For example,
the average lifetime movement distance of two
butterfly species, Junonia coenia and Euptoieta claudia,
are approximately the width of a patch (Haddad
1999a), and home ranges of old-field mice, Peromyscus
polionotus, are approximately one-third the area of a
patch (Davenport 1964). The patches and corridors
were dispersed among five different stands of pine forest
(mainly Pinus taeda and P. palustris).