Movement bias in asymmetric landscapes and its impact on population distribution and critical habitat size

Abstract

Ecologists have long investigated how demographic and movement parameters determine the spatial distribution and critical habitat size of a population. However, most models oversimplify movement behaviour, neglecting how landscape heterogeneity influences individual movement. We relax this assumption and introduce a reaction–advection–diffusion equation that describes population dynamics when individuals exhibit space-dependent movement bias toward preferred regions. Our model incorporates two types of these preferred regions: a high-quality habitat patch, termed ‘habitat’, which is included to model avoidance of degraded habitats like deforested regions; and a preferred location, such as a chemoattractant source or a watering hole, that we allow to be asymmetrically located with respect to habitat edges. In this scenario, the critical habitat size depends on both the relative position of the preferred location and the movement bias intensities. When preferred locations are near habitat edges, the critical habitat size can decrease when diffusion increases, a phenomenon called the drift paradox. Also, ecological traps arise when the habitat overcrowds due to excessive attractiveness or the preferred location is near a low-quality region. Our results highlight the importance of species-specific movement behaviour and habitat preference as drivers of population dynamics in fragmented landscapes and, therefore, in the design of protected areas.