Local Habitat Patches Research Articles

Epiphytic bryophytes on European aspen <i>Populus tremula</i> in old-growth forests in northeastern Finland and in adjacent sites in Russia

We studied the occurrence and cover of epiphytic bryophytes and one lichen species (Lobaria pulmonaria (L.) Hoffm.) growing on Populus tremula L. trunks. Our aim was to explore the spatial scales where epiphyte species respond to their environment. At the landscape scale, fragmented Finnish old-growth forests close to the Russian border and farther west in a heavily fragmented landscape were compared with Russian sites with more continuous old-growth forest landscapes to assess the effect of landscape structure on epiphyte assemblages. We studied factors affecting populations at the level of individual sites and local habitat patches within the forests. Twelve sites were surveyed for epiphytes. We estimated epiphyte occurrence from 353 Populus tremula trunks. There seemed to be only minor differences in the structure of epiphyte assemblages between the three landscapes surveyed. Species richness varied also independently of the landscape structure but was positively related to regional Populus tremula abu...

Area-dependent migration by ringlet butterflies generates a mixture of patchy population and metapopulation attributes.

Interpretation of spatially structured population systems is critically dependent on levels of migration between habitat patches. If there is considerable movement, with each individual visiting several patches, there is one "patchy population"; if there is intermediate movement, with most individuals staying within their natal patch, there is a metapopulation; and if (virtually) no movement occurs, then the populations are separate (Harrison 1991, 1994). These population types actually represent points along a continuum of much to no mobility in relation to patch structure. Therefore, interpretation of the effects of spatial structure on the dynamics of a population system must be accompanied by information on mobility. We use empirical data on movements by ringlet butterflies, Aphantopus hyperantus, to investigate two key issues that need to be resolved in spatially-structured population systems. First, do local habitat patches contain largely independent local populations (the unit of a metapopulation), or merely aggregations of adult butterflies (as in patchy populations)? Second, what are the effects of patch area on migration in and out of the patches, since patch area varies considerably within most real population systems, and because human landscape modification usually results in changes in habitat patch sizes? Mark-release-recapture (MRR) data from two spatially structured study systems showed that 63% and 79% of recaptures remained in the same patch, and thus it seems reasonable to call both systems metapopulations, with some capacity for separate local dynamics to take place in different local patches. Per capita immigration and emigration rates declined with increasing patch area, while the resident fraction increased. Actual numbers of emigrants either stayed the same or increased with area. The effect of patch area on movement of individuals in the system are exactly what we would have expected if A. hyperantus were responding to habitat geometry. Large patches acted as local populations (metapopulation units) and small patches simply as locations with aggregations (units of patchy populations), all within 0.5 km2. Perhaps not unusually, our study system appears to contain a mixture of metapopulation and patchy-population attributes.

Spatial Scaling of Species Composition: Body Masses of North American Land Mammals

We describe the nonrandom assembly of the North American terrestrial mammalian fauna based on body size and spatial scale. The frequency distribution of body masses among species for the entire continental fauna was highly modal and right skewed, even on a logarithmic scale; the median size of the 465 species was approximately 45 g. In contrast, comparable frequency distributions for 24 small patches of relatively homogeneous habitat were essentially uniform, with approximately equal numbers of species in each logarithmic size class; the median sizes of the 19-37 species ranged from approximately 100 to 2,500 g. Frequency distributions for 21 biomes (large regions of relatively similar vegetation) were intermediate between the continental and local assemblages. This pattern of assembly indicates that species of modal size (20-250 g) tend not to coexist in local habitat patches and they replace each other more frequently from habitat to habitat across the landscape than species of relatively large or small size. We hypothesize that three mechanisms are necessary and possibly sufficient to produce this result: competitive exclusion of species of similar size within local habitats, differential extinction of species of large size with small geographic ranges, and greater specialization of modal-sized species owing to energetic and dietary constraints.

Bioeconomic modelling and fisheries management

This paper examines the stability of the Rosenzweig–MacArthur model distributed to identical discrete habitat patches. Migration between patches is assumed to follow the non-diffusive rule that individuals have a fixed rate of leaving their local habitat patch and migrating to another. Under this non-diffusive migration rule, we found that population dispersal on a non-regular and connected habitat network can both stabilize and destabilize the Rosenzweig–MacArthur model. It is also shown that our non-diffusive migration rule apparently becomes diffusive if the habitat network is regular.