Landscape Structure Affects Metapopulation-Scale Tipping Points.
Am Nat
; 202(1): E17-E30, 2023 07.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37384765
AbstractEven when environments deteriorate gradually, ecosystems may shift abruptly from one state to another. Such catastrophic shifts are difficult to predict and sometimes to reverse (so-called hysteresis). While well studied in simplified contexts, we lack a general understanding of how catastrophic shifts spread in realistically spatially structured landscapes. For different types of landscape structures, including typical terrestrial modular and riverine dendritic networks, we here investigate landscape-scale stability in metapopulations whose patches can locally exhibit catastrophic shifts. We find that such metapopulations usually exhibit large-scale catastrophic shifts and hysteresis and that the properties of these shifts depend strongly on the metapopulation spatial structure and on the population dispersal rate: an intermediate dispersal rate, a low average degree, or a riverine spatial structure can largely reduce hysteresis size. Our study suggests that large-scale restoration is easier with spatially clustered restoration efforts and in populations characterized by an intermediate dispersal rate.
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Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Ecosistema
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Am Nat
Año:
2023
Tipo del documento:
Article
Pais de publicación:
Estados Unidos