A probabilistic approach to dispersal in spatially explicit meta-populations.

ABSTRACT: Meta-population and -community models have extended our understanding regarding the influence of habitat distribution, local patch dynamics, and dispersal on species distribution patterns. Currently, theoretical insights on spatial distribution patterns are limited by the dominant use of deterministic approaches for modeling species dispersal. In this work, we introduce a probabilistic, network-based framework to describe species dispersal by considering inter-patch connections as network-determined probabilistic events. We highlight important differences between a deterministic approach and our dispersal formalism. Exemplified for a meta-population, our results indicate that the proposed scheme provides a realistic relationship between dispersal rate and extinction thresholds. Furthermore

SUBMITTER: Karnatak R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7747636 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature