Reserve design to optimize the long‐term persistence of multiple species

Strimas‐Mackey, Matthew; Brodie, Jedediah F.

doi:10.1002/eap.1739

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Such measures are likely to provide insights into landscapes and habitat patches contributions to long‐term population viability (Visconti and Elkin 2009). Such tools are capable of identifying land for reserve designs (Strimas‐Mackey and Brodie 2018) but often still rely on connectivity measures and proxies to determine population dynamics and persistence (Cabeza and Moilanen 2001).…”

Section: Consequences Of Ignoring Demographymentioning

confidence: 99%

The value of considering demographic contributions to connectivity: a review

2021

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Connectivity is a central concept in ecology, wildlife management, and conservation science. Understanding the role of connectivity in determining species persistence is increasingly important in the face of escalating anthropogenic impacts on climate and habitat. These connectivity augmenting processes can severely impact species distributions and community and ecosystem functioning. One general definition of connectivity is that it is an emergent process arising from a set of spatial interdependencies between individuals or populations, and increasingly realistic representations of connectivity are being sought. Generally, connectivity consists of a structural component, relating to the distribution of suitable and unsuitable habitat, and a functional component, relating to movement behavior, yet the interaction of both components often better describes ecological processes. Additionally, although implied by ‘movement', demographic measures such as the occurrence or abundance of organisms are regularly overlooked when quantifying connectivity. Integrating such demographic contributions based on the knowledge of species distribution patterns is critical to understanding the dynamics of spatially structured populations. Demographically‐informed connectivity draws from fundamental concepts in metapopulation ecology while maintaining important conceptual developments from landscape ecology, and the methodological development of spatially‐explicit hierarchical statistical models that have the potential to overcome modeling and data challenges. Together, this offers a promising framework for developing ecologically realistic connectivity metrics. This review synthesizes existing approaches for quantifying connectivity and advocates for demographically‐informed connectivity as a general framework for addressing current problems across ecological fields reliant on connectivity‐driven processes such as population ecology, conservation biology and landscape ecology. Using supporting simulations to highlight the consequences of commonly made assumptions that overlook important demographic contributions, we show that even small amounts of demographic information can greatly improve model performance. Ultimately, we argue demographic measures are central to extending the concept of connectivity and resolves long‐standing challenges associated with accurately quantifying the influence of connectivity on fundamental ecological processes.

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Section: Consequences Of Ignoring Demographymentioning

confidence: 99%

The value of considering demographic contributions to connectivity: a review

2021

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“…This analytic approach provides an elegant tool to evaluate species persistence in fragmented, heterogeneous landscapes ( 24 ). The concept of metapopulation capacity has thus been widely adopted in empirical studies and conservation biology ( 25 – 27 ), and it has motivated new theoretical developments [e.g., predicting how patch network properties and dispersal regimes affect metapopulation capacity and thus species persistence ( 28 – 30 )].…”

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confidence: 99%

Metapopulation capacity determines food chain length in fragmented landscapes

Wang

Brose

Nouhuys

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Significance Understanding the persistence of populations in fragmented landscapes is critical for predicting the consequences of habitat destruction, yet analytical tools are largely lacking. Metapopulation capacity provides one such tool, because it summarizes the influences of habitat area and distribution on population persistence in a single metric. However, surprisingly few efforts have extended this theory to multispecies communities. Our analyses demonstrate the power of metapopulation capacity theory in predicting the persistence of prey–predator pairs and food chains in heterogeneous, fragmented landscapes. Such analytic insights serve as a benchmark to predict the consequences of habitat changes. Our findings thus have broad implications for both ecological research and conservation practices.

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“…MC, although a relative metric, can be sensitive to the scale of dispersal (Blazquez‐Cabrera et al, 2014 ; Strimas‐Mackey & Brodie, 2018b ). Sensitivity analyses are important but uncommon when reporting the MC metric to understand a network's ability to support the metapopulation relative to dispersal capability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%