Simulations to investigate animal movement effects on population dynamics

Abstract

Movement of organisms will influence their ecology and demographics. Animal movements are often characterized by path structures with directional persistence. The extent to which this impacts on population dynamics is investigated in this paper using theoretical simulations. The effects of different movement strategies on variations in visits to individual patches across a forage area are discussed. Variations in resource biomass across patches are shown to persist after long simulations. Consumer resource equations with movement are used to show how heterogeneity in resources caused by these variations can affect global population dynamics. With directional movements (random or persistent), dynamics change from limit cycles to stable equilibrium solutions. It is suggested that this effect has the potential to increase survival because perturbations from unforeseen factors (like drought) are less likely to crash populations. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..