Dynamics of Metapopulations: Habitat Destruction and Competitive Coexistence

Abstract

1. We take a previously studied model for two species -one of which is competitively inferior -coexisting in a patchy environment, and examine the effects of removing patches (that is, of decreasing the amount of available habitat). Habitat destruction or patch removal reduces the number (and proportion) ofpatches occupied by the superior competitor, but can result in an increase in the total number of patches occupied by the inferior competitor (even though there are fewer patches in total).3. It has long been appreciated that disturbance and destruction of habitat can create edge effects and other ecological changes favouring 'weedy' species. The present study suggests that patch removal can by itself favour such species, even in the absence of other, concomitant changes.4. An implication relevant to conservation biology is that habitat loss can bring about changes in community composition in remaining patches, even if such patches themselves undergo no intrinsic changes whatsoever.

Habitat Destruction, Environmental Catastrophes, and Metapopulation Extinction

“…This problem was tackled by using the simple Levins model (see Eq. (2)) in many previous studies (May, 1991;Nee and May, 1992;Lawton et al, 1994;Moilanen and Hanski, 1995;Kareiva and Wennergren 1995). It turned out that the metapopulation is doomed to extinction for values of h smaller than e/c (see again Eq.…”

Super- and Coinfection: The Two Extremes

“…The different strains play the role of distinct species and the hosts play the role of ecological patches. This is further analyzed in Nowak and May (1994) and Tilman et al (1994); also see Nee and May (1992) for a related analysis.…”

The unavoidable costs and unexpected benefits of parasitism: Population and metapopulation models of parasite-mediated competition

“…In our second model, we extend our earlier results to determine the evolutionary dynamics in a metapopulation using the framework developed by Nee and May (1992). The metapopulation consists of three types of demes, including those in which the parasite is absent (H, for "host-only", occupied by hosts with genotype x H = 1), those in which the parasite is present (P, for "parasite-present", occupied by hosts with genotype x p = x ESS ), and extinct demes in which there is no host (V, for "vacant").…”