The dispersal ability of a species will be critical for how population dynamics are realized in spatially structured systems. To date, the effect of group dispersal on metapopulation dynamics is poorly understood. Here, we investigate how group dispersal and Allee effects shape metapopulation dynamics identifying conditions in which group dispersal can be an advantage over independent dispersal...

In this paper we study the influence of populations mobility on the spread of a vector-borne disease. We focus on the chikungunya epidemic event that occurred in 2005-2006 on the Réunion Island, Indian Ocean, France, and validate our models with real epidemic data from the event. We propose a metapopulation model to represent both a high-resolution patch model of the island with realistic popul...

The effects of migration in a network of patch populations, or metapopulation, are extremely important for predicting the possibility of extinctions both at a local and a global scale. Migration between patches synchronizes local populations and bestows upon them identical dynamics (coherent or synchronous oscillations), a feature that is understood to enhance the risk of global extinctions. Th...

The distribution and extinction patterns within a northern metapopulation of the pool frog (Rana lessonae) were analyzed with reference to metapopulation theory. Occupied ponds were permanent and differed from unoccupied ones in terms of higher water temperature during May-June and a closer proximity to neighboring pool-frog localities. but local climate was not spatially autocorrelated. Two ty...

Infectious diseases spread through human networks. Susceptible-InfectedRemoved (SIR) model is one of the epidemic models to describe infection dynamics on a complex network connecting individuals. In the metapopulation SIR model, each node represents a population (group) which has many individuals. In this paper, we propose a modified metapopulation SIR model in which a latent period is taken i...

The incorporation of Allee effects into a simple metapopulation extinction model reveals a large non-linear reduction in mean time to extinction with small changes in an Allee limit. The extent of this reduction is dependent on the level of migration in the metapopulation. With small amounts of migration, small changes in the Allee limit result in large changes in the mean time to extinction. W...

In both strictly theoretical and more applied contexts it has been historically assumed that metapopulations exist within a featureless, uninhabitable matrix and that dynamics within the matrix are unimportant. In this article, we explore the range of theoretical consequences that result from relaxing this assumption. We show, with a variety of modeling techniques, that matrix quality can be ex...

One of the theoretical approaches to study spatially-extended ecosystems is given by metapopulation models, which consider fragmented populations inhabiting discrete patches linked by migration. Most of the metapopulation models assume exponential growth of the local populations and few works have explored the role of cooperation in fragmented ecosystems. In this letter we study the dynamics an...

This paper presents a review of demographically structured (or, frequency-based) models, in which the individuals in a population are grouped into distinct classes. Structured models are used when vital rates (survival, reproduction, dispersal) of individuals depend on their age or physiological/morphological stage. Variation in these rates (environmental stochasticity) and the effect of abunda...

Metapopulation rescue effects are thought to be key to the persistence of many acute immunizing infections. Yet the enhancement of persistence through spatial coupling has not been previously quantified. Here we estimate the metapopulation rescue effects for four childhood infections using global WHO reported incidence data by comparing persistence on island countries vs all other countries, wh...