Metapopulation Models

Abstract

Metapopulations are assemblages of local populations inhabiting networks of habitat patches in fragmented landscapes. The local populations are coupled by migration among the populations. Metapopulation models are used to describe, analyze, and predict the dynamics of metapopulations. Models have been constructed to investigate the consequences of migration on the pattern and synchrony of local dynamics, the processes that may lead to spatial pattern formation due to ecological interactions, the persistence of metapopulations in patch networks in a stochastic balance between local extinctions and colonizations, and the response of metapopulations to changing landscape structure. Metapopulation models for highly fragmented landscapes predict an extinction threshold, a critical amount and configuration of habitat that is necessary for long-term metapopulation persistence. The models thus predict that with increasing habitat loss and fragmentation, species will go extinct before all habitat has been lost. Spatially realistic metapopulation models combine a description of landscape structure with a model of the extinction and colonization processes. These models can be parameterized with empirical data and applied to real metapopulations for the purposes of research, management, and conservation.