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This study investigates population dynamics across multiple sites connected by time-varying migration networks, where local population growth rates also fluctuate periodically. The researchers developed a simplified mathematical approach using linear system comparisons to establish sufficient conditions for overall population growth, demonstrating that populations can thrive even when all individual sites would lead to extinction in isolation, particularly when migration occurs over long time periods with exponentially small migration rates.
Why it matters
This work provides practical tools for predicting population persistence in fragmented habitats and validates a conjecture about dispersal-induced growth. The findings have implications for conservation biology, understanding how species survive in networks of poor-quality habitats through strategic movement, and for managing spatially distributed populations in changing environments.
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⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
Dieser Artikel wurde noch nicht von unabhängigen Experten begutachtet. Die Ergebnisse sind vorläufig und sollten mit Vorsicht interpretiert werden.
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Abstract: We consider a population spreading across a finite number of sites. Individuals can move from one site to the other according to a network (oriented links between the sites) that vary periodically over time. On each site, the population experiences a growth rate which is also periodically time varying. Recently, this kind of models have been extensively studied, using various technical tools to derive precise necessary and sufficient conditions on the parameters of the system (ie the local growth rate on each site, the time period and the strength of migration between the sites) for the population to grow. In the present paper, we take a completely different approach: using elementary comparison results between linear systems, we give sufficient condition for the growth of the population This condition is easy to check and can be applied in a broad class of examples. In particular, in the case when all sites are sinks (ie, in the absence of migration, the population become extinct in each site), we prove that when our condition of growth if satisfied, the population grows when the time period is large and for values of the migration strength that are exponentially small with respect to the time period, which answers positively to a conjecture stated by Katriel.
Source: Sufficient condition for dispersal-induced growth on dynamic networks