We study a variant of Hanski's incidence function model that allows habitat patch characteristics to vary over time following a Markov process. The widely studied case where patches are classified as either suitable or unsuitable is included as a special case. For large metapopulations, we determine a recursion for the probability that a given habitat patch is occupied. This recursion enables us to clarify the role of landscape dynamics in the survival of a metapopulation. In particular, we show that landscape dynamics affects the persistence and equilibrium level of the metapopulation primarily through its effect on the distribution of a local population's life span.
@article{arxiv.1412.0719,
title = {A metapopulation model with Markovian landscape dynamics},
author = {R. McVinish and P. K. Pollett and Y. S. Chan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.0719},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/