Anchor habitat

Habitat that provides sufficient capacity or critical resources to contribute substantially to the persistence of a species or population within a larger landscape. An anchor habitat may support a resident population or provide reproductive, foraging, refuge, or other functions upon which use of the surrounding landscape depends. Unlike a node, which describes a position or concentration of capacity within a network, anchor habitat is defined by its importance to population persistence. The term has an applied conservation-planning lineage, while its ecological basis draws on source–sink dynamics, metapopulation ecology, and landscape complementation and supplementation.