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Metapopulation dynamics

Nature volume 396, pages 41–49 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

Metapopulation biology is concerned with the dynamic consequences of migration among local populations and the conditions of regional persistence of species with unstable local populations. Well established effects of habitat patch area and isolation on migration, colonization and population extinction have now become integrated with classic metapopulation dynamics. This has led to models that can be used to predict the movement patterns of individuals, the dynamics of species, and the distributional patterns in multispecies communities in real fragmented landscapes.

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Figure 1: Three approaches to spatial ecology.
Figure 2: The probability of extinction in the Glanville fritillary butterfly is influenced both by ecological factors and by heterozygosity, which is here used as a measure of the level of inbreeding29.
Figure 3: The incidence function model (IFM) is here parameterized for metapopulations of an insect (the Glanville fritillary butterfly, Melitae a cinxia), a passerine bird (the European nuthatch, Sitta europaea), and a small mammal (the American pika, Ochotona princeps), and the parameterized model is used to investigate the consequences of hypothetical scenarios of habitat destruction.
Figure 4: Bifurcation diagrams for the fraction of occupied habitat in metapopulations.
Figure 5: Examples of species–area (SA) curves in classic and mainland-island metapopulations predicted by a metacommunity model of non-interactive species with interspecific differences in population density66.

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Acknowledgements

I thank S. Harrison, M. Hassell, T. Ives, J. Lawton, A. Moilanen, S. van Nouhuys, B. O'Hara, A. Ruina, I. Saccheri, M. Singer, C. Thomas, P. Turchin and N. Wahlberg for comments on the manuscript, and J. Verboom and A. Smith for supplying the nuthatch and pika data for Fig. 3. My metapopulation research has been supported by the Academy of Finland.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Systematics, Division of Population Biology, PO Box 17 (Arkadiankatu 7), FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland

    Ilkka Hanski

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Hanski, I. Metapopulation dynamics. Nature 396, 41–49 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/23876

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