Metapopulations, Dispersal, and Predator‐Prey Dynamics: An Overview
Metapopulations, Dispersal, and Predator‐Prey Dynamics: An Overview
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DOI：
10.2307/1940297
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发表时间：
1990-04
期刊：
影响因子：
4.8
通讯作者：
Andrew D. Taylor
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Andrew D. Taylor
The idea that dispersal among local populations may allow the persistence of regional "metapopulations," despite unstable fluctuations and even extinctions locally, has long been important in ecology (Andrewartha and Birch 1954, 1984, den Boer 1968, 1981, 1987; review in DeAngelis and Waterhouse 1987). An especially popular application of this idea has been to predator-prey interactions (Nicholson 1933, Nicholson and Bailey 1935, den Boer 1968, Murdock and Oaten 1975, Murdoch 1979, Murdoch et al. 1985, Morrison and Barbosa 1987), as a way of reconciling their persistence in nature with the fact that spatially simple predator-prey systems, both in the laboratory (Gause 1934, Huffaker 1958, Luckinbill 1973) and in models (Nicholson 1933, Nicholson and Bailey 1935), tend to be unstable to the point of extinction. Dispersal within a population with large-scale spatial subdivision clearly is important in some species and systems. The basic notions of succession and "fugitive" species indicate its role in many instances of interspecific competition (e.g., Levins and Culver 1971, Horn and MacArthur 1972, Levin and Paine 1974, Slatkin 1974, Hanski 1981, 1983). In other cases local extinctions due to bad weather, followed by recolonization, may be common (Birch 1971, Ehrlich et al. 1980, Antolin and Strong 1987, Harrison et al. 1988, D. R. Strong, unpublished manuscript). For predator-prey interactions, however, evidence of the importance of dispersal is almost wholly indirect. First, it has been argued that not only are simple laboratory or model interactions unstable, but that the features thought capable of producing local stability are either absent (Dempster 1983, Murdoch et al. 1 984) or inadequate (Morrison and Barbosa 1987) in many natural interactions. There also is theoretical support for the possibility of dispersal permitting regional persistence despite local instability in two-species predator-prey systems (Taylor 1988b and below). (Similar results also have been obtained for similar systems containing two prey or two predator species [e.g., Caswell 1978, Hastings 1978, Crowley 1979, Hanski 1981, Hogeweg and Hesper 1981], but as these have been primarily concerned with the problem of competitive coexistence rather than predator-prey persistence, I will not consider them further.) There is also some suggestive laboratory evidence, and a few field examples in which dispersal and metapopulation structure may be important. In my view, however, there is not yet any convincing evidence supporting the hypothesized role of population structure and dispersal in any natural predator-prey interaction. In the following, after summarizing what is known from models, I will concentrate on a review of the empirical, and especially field, data. My aim is not simply to assert that we know very little about dispersal in natural predator-prey systems, but to point out why this is: why large-scale spatial dynamics have been so difficult to study, and how they might better be addressed (see also Reeve 1990).
