Metacommunity stability and persistence for predation turnoff in selective patches

Abstract

Predation as an important trophic interaction of ecological communities controls the large-scale patterns of species distribution, population abundance and community structure. Numerous studies address that predation can mediate diversity and regulate the ecological community and food web stability through changes in the behavior, morphology, development, and abundance of prey. Since predation has large effects on persistence and diversity, the local loss or removal of predation in a community can trigger a cascade of extinctions. In ecological theory, the effect of predation removal has been well studied in foodwebs, but it remains unclear in the case of a spatially distributed community connected by dispersal. In this study, the interaction between local and spatial processes is taken into account, we present how a predation turnoff in selective patches affects the synchronized oscillatory dynamics of a metacommunity. Using a simple predator–prey metacommunity with a diffusive dispersal, we show the impact of predation on synchronized, asynchronized and source–sink dynamics. Our results reveal that predation turnoff in very few patches stabilizes the metacommunity by damping the perfectly synchronized oscillatory state into multicluster equilibrium (i.e., steady) states. In a source–sink behavior, predation turnoff in a source patch reduces the number of sink patches and changes the clusters. In general, predation turnoff in low number of patches shows non-zero equilibrium states in both prey and predator populations, whereas predation turnoff in a larger number of patches can lead to the complete extinction of predators. Moreover, prey density from the patches where predation is absent goes to a saturating state near the carrying capacity. Thus, this study stresses that predation turnoff in selective patches acts as a stabilizing mechanism to promote the metacommunity persistence.