High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ecological traps are scenarios in which rapid environmental change leads organisms to prefer to settle in poor-quality habitats. The concept stems from the idea that organisms that are actively selecting habitat must rely on environmental cues to help them identify high quality habitat. If either the habitat quality or the cue changes so that one does not reliably indicate the other, organisms may be lured into poor quality habitat. More specifically, traps are thought to occur when the attractiveness of a habitat increases disproportionately relative to its value for survival and reproduction. The result is preference of falsely attractive habitat and a general avoidance of high-quality but less-attractive habitats. For example, Indigo Buntings typically nest in shrubby habitat or broken forest transitions between closed canopy forest and open field. Human activity can create 'sharper', more abrupt forest edges and buntings prefer to nest...