Download Free Modeling Population Dynamics And Species Interactions In A Changing Climate Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Modeling Population Dynamics And Species Interactions In A Changing Climate and write the review.

Many species are expected to undergo significant distributional shifts in response to changes in climate. This adaptive response can impact population dynamics in many ways, including decreasing reproductive fitness, limiting dispersal, shrinking habitat, and exposing organisms to new competition from invasive species. What determines the successful persistence of a population exposed to climate change? In this dissertation I address different aspects of this fundamental question in three chapters. In the first chapter, I focus on the challenges of modeling asymmetric dispersal. I use a spatially explicit integro-difference equation (IDE) to model a population whose habitat is shifting due to climate change, and demonstrate its equivalence to a stationary IDE model with asymmetric dispersal behavior. The cumulative effects of population dispersal in space and time have been described with some success by Van Kirk and Lewis's average dispersal success approximation (Van Kirk and Lewis, 1997), but this approximation has been demonstrated to perform poorly when applied to asymmetric dispersal. I provide a comparison of different characterizations of dispersal success and demonstrate how to accurately approximate the effects of asymmetric dispersal with a method known as geometric symmetrization. I apply these different methods to a variety of IDE population models with asymmetric dispersal, and I examine the methods' effectiveness in approximating key ecological traits of the models, such as the critical patch size and the critical speed of climate change for population persistence. I show that the method using geometric symmetrization performs considerably better than other approximations for a variety of models and across a wide range of parameter values. In the second chapter, I examine a coupled system of IDEs that models two species competing for the same resources in a shifting habitat. I determine under what conditions the two populations can coexist and the criteria for persistence in a changing climate. I demonstrate how the speed of climate change can shift the stable-state solution of the population model from mutual coexistence to a single species outcompeting the other and how these effects can be mitigated by niche differentiation, with the potential for habitat considered inhospitable to one species to provide refuge for the other. I illustrate this model with a simulated population of native bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) experiencing competition from invasive brook trout (S. fontinalis) as their river habitat warms due to climate change. Based on current climate projections, this simulation suggests that bull trout are likely to disappear from the study area by 2080, with brook trout expanding their range in the absence of competition. In the third chapter, I describe a new type of model that combines climate-envelope modeling with IDEs to utilize the strengths of both correlative and process-based modeling. I apply this framework to a case study of the American pika (Ochotona princeps), a small montane mammal that is widely recognized as threatened by climate change, and compare this with both a traditional climate-envelope model and an IDE. The results suggest that climate-envelope models alone can substantially underestimate the impacts of climate change, but the predictions of integro-difference models can be considerably improved by incorporating the modeled climate envelope.
This book presents new approaches to studying food webs, using practical and policy examples to demonstrate the theory behind ecosystem management decisions.
The theme of this volume is to discuss Eco-evolutionary Dynamics. Updates and informs the reader on the latest research findings Written by leading experts in the field Highlights areas for future investigation
Bringing together leaders in the fields of climate change ecology, wildlife population dynamics, and environmental policy, this title examines the impacts of climate change on populations of terrestrial vertebrates. It also includes chapters that assess the details of climate change ecology.
Two of the most important drivers of species loss are climate change and land use change. Although climate change and land use change are widely studied, we know little about the interaction of changing climate and habitat degradation on a population's dynamics or how a population will respond to increasing environmental variability. To understand how both of these factors affect species population dynamics, I use a variety of methods, including simulation-based and theoretical approaches, and the application of empirical data. In this thesis, I (1) downscale extreme event modeling to an ecologically-relevant spatial scale using generalized extreme value theory and apply this method to a hurricane-disturbed subtropical understory shrub in Southeast Florida, (2) analyze the sensitivity of the stochastic growth rate to changes in transitions between environmental states, and (3) use a simulation-based study of the interaction of climate change and habitat degradation on a population's time to extinction.
Spatial Ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the dynamics of individual species and on the structure, dynamics, diversity, and stability of multispecies communities. Although the ecological world is unavoidably spatial, there have been few attempts to determine how explicit considerations of space may alter the predictions of ecological models, or what insights it may give into the causes of broad-scale ecological patterns. As this book demonstrates, the spatial structure of a habitat can fundamentally alter both the qualitative and quantitative dynamics and outcomes of ecological processes. Spatial Ecology highlights the importance of space to five topical areas: stability, patterns of diversity, invasions, coexistence, and pattern generation. It illustrates both the diversity of approaches used to study spatial ecology and the underlying similarities of these approaches. Over twenty contributors address issues ranging from the persistence of endangered species, to the maintenance of biodiversity, to the dynamics of hosts and their parasitoids, to disease dynamics, multispecies competition, population genetics, and fundamental processes relevant to all these cases. There have been many recent advances in our understanding of the influence of spatially explicit processes on individual species and on multispecies communities. This book synthesizes these advances, shows the limitations of traditional, non-spatial approaches, and offers a variety of new approaches to spatial ecology that should stimulate ecological research.
Rising temperatures are affecting organisms in all of Earth's biomes, but the complexity of ecological responses to climate change has hampered the development of a conceptually unified treatment of them. In a remarkably comprehensive synthesis, this book presents past, ongoing, and future ecological responses to climate change in the context of two simplifying hypotheses, facilitation and interference, arguing that biotic interactions may be the primary driver of ecological responses to climate change across all levels of biological organization. Eric Post's synthesis and analyses of ecological consequences of climate change extend from the Late Pleistocene to the present, and through the next century of projected warming. His investigation is grounded in classic themes of enduring interest in ecology, but developed around novel conceptual and mathematical models of observed and predicted dynamics. Using stability theory as a recurring theme, Post argues that the magnitude of climatic variability may be just as important as the magnitude and direction of change in determining whether populations, communities, and species persist. He urges a more refined consideration of species interactions, emphasizing important distinctions between lateral and vertical interactions and their disparate roles in shaping responses of populations, communities, and ecosystems to climate change.
Rising temperatures are affecting organisms in all of Earth's biomes, but the complexity of ecological responses to climate change has hampered the development of a conceptually unified treatment of them. In a remarkably comprehensive synthesis, this book presents past, ongoing, and future ecological responses to climate change in the context of two simplifying hypotheses, facilitation and interference, arguing that biotic interactions may be the primary driver of ecological responses to climate change across all levels of biological organization. Eric Post's synthesis and analyses of ecological consequences of climate change extend from the Late Pleistocene to the present, and through the next century of projected warming. His investigation is grounded in classic themes of enduring interest in ecology, but developed around novel conceptual and mathematical models of observed and predicted dynamics. Using stability theory as a recurring theme, Post argues that the magnitude of climatic variability may be just as important as the magnitude and direction of change in determining whether populations, communities, and species persist. He urges a more refined consideration of species interactions, emphasizing important distinctions between lateral and vertical interactions and their disparate roles in shaping responses of populations, communities, and ecosystems to climate change.
Human-induced environmental change currently represents the single greatest threat to global biodiversity. Species are typically adapted to the local environmental conditions in which they have evolved. Changes in environmental conditions initially influence behaviour, which in turn affects species interactions, population dynamics, evolutionary processes and, ultimately, biodiversity. How animals respond to changed conditions, and how this influences population viability, is an area of growing research interest. Yet, despite the vital links between environmental change, behaviour, and population dynamics, surprisingly little has been done to bridge these areas of research. Behavioural Responses to a Changing World is the first book of its kind devoted to understanding behavioural responses to environmental change. The volume is comprehensive in scope, discussing impacts on both the mechanisms underlying behavioural processes, as well as the longer-term ecological and evolutionary consequences. Drawing on international experts from across the globe, the book covers topics as diverse as endocrine disruption, learning, reproduction, migration, species interactions, and evolutionary rescue.
This new approach to insect modeling discusses population dynamics' regularities, control theory, theory of transitions, and describes methods of population dynamics and outbreaks modeling for forest phyllophagous insects and their effects on global climate change. Research in insect population dynamics is important for more reasons than just protecting forest communities. Insect populations are among the main ecological units included in the analysis of stability of ecological systems. Moreover, it is convenient to test new methods of analyzing population and community stability on the insect-related data, as by now ecologists and entomologists have accumulated large amounts of such data. In this book, the authors analyze population dynamics of quite a narrow group of insects – forest defoliators. It is hoped that the methods proposed herein for the analysis of population dynamics of these species may be useful and effective for analyzing population dynamics of other animal species and their effects and role in global warming. What can insects tell us about our environment and our ever-changing climate? It is through studies like this one that these important answers can be obtained, along with data on the insects and their behaviors themselves. The authors present new theories on modeling and data accumulation, using cutting-edge processes never before published for such a wide audience. This volume presents the state-of-the-art in the science, and it is an essential piece of any entomologist's and forest engineer's library.