22 Flashcards
Dispersal
movement from one population to another
dispersal allows organisms to:
- colonise new areas
- escape competition
- avoid inbreeding depression
in animals, dispersal relies on
active movement - running, flying, etc
how are plants able to disperse?
they have evolved traits that aid dispersal:
- sweet, fleshy fruit is an adaptation that attracts animal seed disperses
- other seeds are dispersed by wind or water
Describe how dispersal is important for colonisation of new habitats
- postglacial colonisation depends on plant and animal dispersal
- most of Canada was under ice ~12,000 years ago
- range shifts in response to climate change depend on dispersal
- islands
Metapopulation
a population of populations - a collection of specially distinct populations that are connected via dispersal
how is dispersal involved in the formation of metapopulations?
- dispersal connects populations
- We call each spatially distinct population a patch
describe how metapopulation structure can allow population persistence even when individual populations are doomed
- local populations can be reestablished by colonists from other populations after going extinct
source-sink dynamics
Source-sink dynamics:
* ‘Sinks’ are populations in small habitat
patches that would go extinct, except …
* Migrants from ‘source’ populations ‘rescue’
these populations
Oceanic Island - single island level
- some prey colonize empty island
- prey quickly grow toward carrying capacity
- some predators arrive and reproduce rapidly
- predators drive prey to extinction
- predators starve, island is empty
single island system
At the island level, this
system is inherently
unstable: both species
go extinct
archipelago of many such islands, each at a different stage, with some dispersal possible
- a group of weakly coupled, locally unstable
systems can be globally stable - The coupling is provided by occasional dispersal between islands
patch dynamics
- akin to population dynamics, except:
- instead of individuals in a population, we track patch occupancy through time
give a simple case for patch dynamics
- a large number of identical patches
- ignore population size within patches
- populations within patches go extinct at some constant rate e
- colonisation of patches is affected by P and 1-P
- colonisation rate is thus cP(1-P), where c is a constant
colonisation of patches is affected by:
- the fraction of currently occupied patches, P
- higher P = more sources for colonisers
- the fraction of empty patches, 1-P
- as patches fill up, there are few patches available to colonise