In South Africa, cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) occur as a relictual, unmanaged population of ‘free-roamers’, managed metapopulation across fenced reserves, and in various captive facilities. To ensure that the Cheetah Metapopulation Project (CMP) is not at risk losing overall genetic variation to drift or inbreeding, we propose interventions, including exchanges between free-roamers supplementatio...

We compute the mean patch occupancy for a stochastic, spatially explicit patch-occupancy metapopulation model on a dynamic, correlated landscape, using a mathematically exact perturbation expansion about a mean-field limit that applies when dispersal range is large. Stochasticity in the metapopulation and landscape dynamics gives negative contributions to patch occupancy, the former being more ...

Two aspects of patch geometry—area and isolation—currently dominate the field of metapopulation dynamics. Under this area-and-isolation paradigm, models commonly assume that the probability of local extinction decreases as patch area increases and that the probability of colonization increases as patch connectivity increases. Environmental variables other than patch area and isolation are assum...

Long-term observational studies conducted at large (regional) spatial scales contribute to better understanding of landscape effects on population and evolutionary dynamics, including the conditions that affect long-term viability of species, but large-scale studies are expensive and logistically challenging to keep running for a long time. Here, we describe the long-term metapopulation study o...

Parameter estimation is a critical step in the use of any metapopulation model for predictive purposes. Typically metapopulation studies assume that empirical data are of good quality and any errors are so insignificant that they can be ignored. However, three types of errors occur commonly in metapopulation data sets. First, patch areas can be mis-estimated. Second, unknown habitat patches may...

The metapopulation viability analysis package, vortex, was used to examine viability and recovery objectives for piping plovers Charadrius melodus, an endangered shorebird that breeds in three distinct regions of North America. Baseline models indicate that while Atlantic Coast populations, under current management practices, are at little risk of near-term extinction, Great Plains and Great La...

An extensive allozyme survey was conducted within a natural "meta" population of the native North American annual legume, Chamaecrista fasciculata (Leguminosae) to quantify genetic structure at different spatial scales. Gene flow was then estimated by a recently developed indirect method based on a continuous population model, using pairwise kinship coefficients between individuals. The indirec...

Classical metapopulations are groups of local populations living in networks of spatially distinct habitat patches in a balance between local extinctions and recolonizations of empty habitat. Models are needed for understanding and predicting metapopulation dynamics in changing landscapes. One particularly important question is what is the effect of habitat loss to the persistence of a metapopu...