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Populations in a Landscape Context: Sources, Sinks, and Metapopulations

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Wildlife and Landscape Ecology

Abstract

Traditionally, a population is considered a single, well-mixed collection of individuals in an arbitrarily defined space (Elton 1927). From this view, ecologists have sought detailed understanding of dynamics by measuring the survival and fecundity of different-sized or aged individuals. However, this approach ignores the explicit spatial distribution of individuals and the resources to which they respond. Many recent studies demonstrate that populations can exhibit well-defined distributions, or “structure,” in space, and this spatial structure may have considerable influence on population dynamics (Pulliam 1988; Kareiva 1990 Pulliam and Danielson 1991 Kareiva and Wennergren 1995). Landscape features, i.e., spatial distribution of habitats, barriers to movement, etc., are likely to affect strongly the spatial structure of populations. In this chapter, I develop a simple mathematical theory to generate predictions of how landscape pattern can have large consequences for species’ population dynamics and hence the management of those species. These predictions suggest an expanded set of research questions that encourage the measurement of different population characteristics and the use of different criteria for management.

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Authors
  1. Mark E. Ritchie
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (U.S. Geological Survey—Biological Resources Devision) Department of Fisheries and Wildlife College of Natural Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT, 84322-5290, USA

    John A. Bissonette

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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Ritchie, M.E. (1997). Populations in a Landscape Context: Sources, Sinks, and Metapopulations. In: Bissonette, J.A. (eds) Wildlife and Landscape Ecology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1918-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1918-7_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7338-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-1918-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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