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The value of considering demographic contributions to connectivity : a review

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Drake_2021_Ecog_value_considering_demographic_CC.pdf (1.005Mb)
Date
05/06/2022
Author
Drake, Joseph
Lambin, Xavier
Sutherland, Chris
Keywords
Colonization-extinction
Connectivity
Demographically-weighted connectivity
Dispersal
Dynamic
Eco-evolutionary
Metapopulation
Occupancy
Resistance
Spatiotemporal
SPOM
QH301 Biology
SDG 13 - Climate Action
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Abstract
Connectivity is a central concept in ecology, wildlife management, and conservation science. Understanding the role of connectivity in determining species persistence is increasingly important in the face of escalating anthropogenic impacts on climate and habitat. These connectivity augmenting processes can severely impact species distributions and community and ecosystem functioning. One general definition of connectivity is that it is an emergent process arising from a set of spatial interdependencies between individuals or populations, and increasingly realistic representations of connectivity are being sought. Generally, connectivity consists of a structural component, relating to the distribution of suitable and unsuitable habitat, and a functional component, relating to movement behavior, yet the interaction of both components often better describes ecological processes. Additionally, although implied by ‘movement', demographic measures such as the occurrence or abundance of organisms are regularly overlooked when quantifying connectivity. Integrating such demographic contributions based on the knowledge of species distribution patterns is critical to understanding the dynamics of spatially structured populations. Demographically-informed connectivity draws from fundamental concepts in metapopulation ecology while maintaining important conceptual developments from landscape ecology, and the methodological development of spatially-explicit hierarchical statistical models that have the potential to overcome modeling and data challenges. Together, this offers a promising framework for developing ecologically realistic connectivity metrics. This review synthesizes existing approaches for quantifying connectivity and advocates for demographically-informed connectivity as a general framework for addressing current problems across ecological fields reliant on connectivity-driven processes such as population ecology, conservation biology and landscape ecology. Using supporting simulations to highlight the consequences of commonly made assumptions that overlook important demographic contributions, we show that even small amounts of demographic information can greatly improve model performance. Ultimately, we argue demographic measures are central to extending the concept of connectivity and resolves long-standing challenges associated with accurately quantifying the influence of connectivity on fundamental ecological processes.
Citation
Drake , J , Lambin , X & Sutherland , C 2022 , ' The value of considering demographic contributions to connectivity : a review ' , Ecography , vol. 2022 , no. 6 , e05552 . https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05552
Publication
Ecography
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.05552
ISSN
0906-7590
Type
Journal item
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Ecography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.05552#support-information-section
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/23423

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