Metapopulation extinction risk is increased by environmental stochasticity and assemblage complexity.

ABSTRACT: Extinction risk is a key area of investigation for contemporary ecologists and conservation biologists. Practical conservation efforts for vulnerable species can be considerably enhanced by thoroughly understanding the ecological processes that interact to determine species persistence or extinction. Theory has highlighted the importance of both extrinsic environmental factors and intrinsic demographic processes. In laboratory microcosms, single-species single-habitat patch experimental designs have been widely used to validate the theoretical prediction that environmental heterogeneity can increase extinction risk. Here, we develop on this theme by testing the effects of fluctuating resource levels in experimental multispecies metapopulations. We compare a three-species host-parasitoid as

SUBMITTER: Bull JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1679879 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature