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- Title
THE INFLATIONARY EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL FLUCTUATIONS ENSURE THE PERSISTENCE OF SINK METAPOPULATIONS.
- Authors
Matthews, David P.; Gonzalez, Andrew
- Abstract
Under current rates of environmental change many populations may be found in habitats of low quality and low conservation value, creating population sinks. We test recent theory that suggests, surprisingly, that stochastic environmental variability may enhance the long-term persistence of sink metapopulations. Using experimental populations of Paramecium aurelia we show that it is possible for a metapopulation comprised entirely of sink populations to persist for many generations in a random environment. In accordance with the theory, we show that positive temporal autocorrelation and low spatial correlation in the environment can ensure the long-term persistence and enhance the mean and maximum abundance of sink metapopulations. High levels of spatial correlation in the environment created strong population synchrony and limited the persistence time of the sink metapopulations. These results have important implications for the development of a theory underlying the synergistic effects of habitat fragmentation and environmental change on population persistence.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTAL impact analysis; ECOLOGICAL carrying capacity; HABITAT selection; STOCHASTIC approximation; PARAMECIUM aurelia; AUTOCORRELATION (Statistics); BIOLOGICAL extinction; FRAGMENTED landscapes; ECOLOGY education
- Publication
Ecology, 2007, Vol 88, Issue 11, p2848
- ISSN
0012-9658
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1890/06-1107.1