ORIGINAL ARTICLE Habitat scarcity forms an ecological trap for the grey partridge (Perdix perdix) within a central European agricultural landscape Martin Černý 1,2 & Dana Rymešová 3 & Miroslav Šálek 4 Received: 14 February 2020 /Revised: 27 August 2020 /Accepted: 11 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract This study examines the habitat selection of grey partridge (Perdix perdix) and the effect of habitat type within partridge home ranges on nest site choice and nest success. Data were collected via radio-tracking in three different areas in the Czech Republic between 2002 and 2010. Compositional analysis was performed on 12 habitat types and uncultivated habitats (such as ruderals, field margins and game refuges) were selected the most during the pre-nesting and nesting periods. Grey partridges tended to nest in uncultivated habitats and avoided nesting in dominant cereal monocultures. We tested six variables that may determine nest site choice and success. Of these, the study area, proportion of selected habitat and habitat diversity (expressed by the Simpson’s diversity index) significantly affected nest placement in uncultivated habitats. Despite this, the lowest nest failure rate was observed in the predominant cereal habitat. Our findings suggest a possible ecological trap for partridges throughout our study areas. Due to the lack of uncultivated habitats, partridges favoured nesting in habitats with a higher predation risk. Conservation managers should increase the proportion of uncultivated areas and promote habitat diversity for partridge populations in central Europe. Keywords Selected habitat . Dominant habitat . Uncultivated . Cultivated . Nest success . Ruderals Introduction There has been a strong decline in the abundance of many bird species within agricultural landscapes since the latter half of the twentieth century (Siriwardena et al. 1998; Chamberlain et al. 2000; Donald et al. 2001; Aebischer and Ewald 2010; Reif and Vermouzek 2019; Traba and Morales 2019). Agricultural land dominates the European landscape and is an important habitat for many species (Robinson and Sutherland 2002). Chemical usage, agricultural intensification and changes away from more traditional methods are most often cited as causes of the decline in population sizes of farmland species (Newton 2004; Frenzel et al. 2016). One of the most important impacts of agricultural intensification is the loss of habitat heterogeneity, which is key for biodiversity (Benton et al. 2003). This is mainly caused by merging of smaller fields into larger units, accompanied by the removal of field margins and other unmanaged patches within agricul- tural landscapes (Robinson and Sutherland 2002). However, unmanaged habitats including fallows, ruderals, grass and shrub patches, are essential for most farmland bird species (Traba and Morales 2019). The sowing of crop with minimal variability also contributes to the homogenisation of the land- scape. With such practices comes a loss of suitable habitats for foraging, nesting and rearing of young (Benton et al. 2003). The loss of suitable habitat is known to result in increased predation pressure on populations of farmland species (Whittingham and Evans 2004). Working in synergy with habitat loss, this subsequently results in rapid declines of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-020-01422-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Martin Černý mcerny@mzm.cz 1 Department of Zoology, Moravian Museum, Zelný trh 6, 65937 Brno, Czech Republic 2 Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, 61137 Brno, Czech Republic 3 Department of Biology and Wildlife Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Hygiene and Ecology, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Palackého tř. 1946/1, 61242 Brno, Czech Republic 4 Department of Ecology, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 16500 Prague - Suchdol, Czech Republic European Journal of Wildlife Research (2020) 66:83 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-020-01422-w