Optimizing metapopulation sustainability through a checkerboard strategy.

ABSTRACT: The persistence of a spatially structured population is determined by the rate of dispersal among habitat patches. If the local dynamic at the subpopulation level is extinction-prone, the system viability is maximal at intermediate connectivity where recolonization is allowed, but full synchronization that enables correlated extinction is forbidden. Here we developed and used an algorithm for agent-based simulations in order to study the persistence of a stochastic metapopulation. The effect of noise is shown to be dramatic, and the dynamics of the spatial population differs substantially from the predictions of deterministic models. This has been validated for the stochastic versions of the logistic map, the Ricker map and the Nicholson-Bailey host-parasitoid system. To analyze the possib

SUBMITTER: Zion YB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2798954 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature