Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Theoretical Ecology 3 (2010): 137-152, doi:10.1007/s12080-009-0058-0.
Description:
The dendritic structure of a river network creates directional dispersal and a hierarchical
arrangement of habitats. These two features have important consequences for the
ecological dynamics of species living within the network.We apply matrix population models to a stage-structured population in a network of habitat patches connected in a dendritic
arrangement. By considering a range of life histories and dispersal patterns, both constant
in time and seasonal, we illustrate how spatial structure, directional dispersal, survival, and
reproduction interact to determine population growth rate and distribution. We investigate
the sensitivity of the asymptotic growth rate to the demographic parameters of the model,
the system size, and the connections between the patches. Although some general patterns
emerge, we find that a species’ mode of reproduction and dispersal are quite important in its
response to changes in its life history parameters or in the spatial structure. The framework
we use here can be customized to incorporate a wide range of demographic and dispersal
scenarios.
Description:
Funding for this work came from the James S. McDonnell Foundation (EEG, HJL, WFF). MGN was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (CMG-0530830, OCE-0326734, ATM-0428122).
Keywords:
Metapopulation
;
Dispersal bias
;
Spatial ecology
;
Eigenvector analysis
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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