Spatial scale, patchiness and population dynamics on land

Abstract

The most striking difference between land and open sea is the greater structural heterogeneity of terrestrial environments. I make a distinction between two principal kinds of patches at two spatial scales, defined by the relative contributions of behaviour and demography to variation in density. At the scale of resource patches, movements of individuals among the patches influence the frequencies of ecological interaction among the mobile individuals and their offspring. Many studies have demonstrated how independently aggregated spatial distributions generally enhance stability of single-species and many-species dynamics. At the scale of habitat patches, assemblages of local populations connected by migration constitute metapopulations.