Two of the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide are the loss and fragmentation of native habitat. A consequence of ongoing degradation is that more and more species are being challenged to survive as spatially structured populations within patchy landscapes. The fate of these species depends in part on their perceptions of the spatial and temporal structure of the landscape: a species' dispersal ability and the isolation of patches interact across varying temporal scales to determine colonization potential. For example, the suitability of a patch can be altered due to anomalous weather events or predictable drought cycles, forest fires or crop rotations in agricultural settings. These events, regardless of whether they are harmful or helpful, stochastic or deterministic, change the landscape and thus influence the species' survival.
Currently, DeWoody and colleagues are testing their hypotheses in experimental landscapes consisting of distinct flour patches inhabited by sawtooth grain beetles. This system will enable them to validate the model, refine methods for parameter estimation, and explore the limits of these persistence thresholds within a stochastic environment.
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Yssa D. DeWoody, Zhilan Feng, and Robert K. Swihart, "Merging Spatial and Temporal Structure within a Metapopulation Model." 166:1 July 2005