Towards a Unified Framework for Connectivity That Disentangles Movement and Mortality in Space and Time

circuit-theory
conservation
dispersal
ecology
predictions
redundancy
resistance
Authors

Robert J. Fletcher

Jorge A. Sefair

Chao Wang

Caroline L. Poli

Thomas A. H. Smith

Emilio M. Bruna

Robert D. Holt

Michael Barfield

Andrew J. Marx

Miguel A. Acevedo

Doi
Abstract
Predicting connectivity, or how landscapes alter movement, is essential for understanding the scope for species persistence with environmental change. Although it is well known that movement is risky, connectivity modelling often conflates behavioural responses to the matrix through which animals disperse with mortality risk. We derive new connectivity models using random walk theory, based on the concept of spatial absorbing Markov chains. These models decompose the role of matrix on movement behaviour and mortality risk, can incorporate species distribution to predict the amount of flow, and provide both short- and long-term analytical solutions for multiple connectivity metrics. We validate the framework using data on movement of an insect herbivore in 15 experimental landscapes. Our results demonstrate that disentangling the roles of movement behaviour and mortality risk is fundamental to accurately interpreting landscape connectivity, and that spatial absorbing Markov chains provide a generalisable and powerful framework with which to do so.
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