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Spreading speeds for stage structured plant populations in fragmented landscapes

Gilbert, Mark A.; White, Steven M.; Bullock, James M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0529-4020; Gaffney, Eamonn A.. 2014 Spreading speeds for stage structured plant populations in fragmented landscapes. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 349. 135-149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.01.024

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Abstract/Summary

Landscape fragmentation has huge ecological and economic implications and affects the spatial dynamics of many plant species. Determining the speed of population spread in fragmented/heterogeneous landscapes is therefore of utmost importance to ecologists. Stage-structured Integrodifference Equations(IDEs) are deterministic models which accurately reflect the life cycles and dispersal patterns for numerous species. Existing approximations to wave-speeds consider only particular kernels, or landscapes in which the scale of variation is much smaller than the dispersal scale. We propose an analytical approximation to the wavespeeds of IDE solutions with periodic landscapes of alternating good and bad patches, where the dispersal scale is greater than the extent of each good patch and where the ratio of the demographic rates in the good and bad patches is given by a small parameter, denoted epsilon. We formulate this approximation for the Gaussian and Laplace dispersal kernels and for stage structured and non-stage structured populations, and compare the results against numerical simulations. We find that the approximation is accurate for the landscapes considered, and that the type of dispersal kernel affects the relationship between landscape structure, as classified by landscape period and good patch size, and the spreading speed. This indicates that accurately fitting a kernel to data is important in determining the relationship between landscape structure and spreading speed.

Item Type: Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.01.024
Programmes: CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Biodiversity > BD Topic 1 - Observations, Patterns, and Predictions for Biodiversity > BD - 1.4 - Quantify and model interactions to determine impacts ...
CEH Topics & Objectives 2009 - 2012 > Biodiversity > BD Topic 2 - Ecological Processes in the Environment > BD - 2.2 - Quantify the impact of invasive species, pathogens ...
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas: Pywell
ISSN: 0022-5193
Additional Keywords: integrodifference equations, species invasion, habitat loss, conservation, dispersal
NORA Subject Terms: Ecology and Environment
Date made live: 04 Feb 2014 13:04 +0 (UTC)
URI: https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/504691

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