Demography and dispersal: integrating spatial movement and the life cycle
Hal Caswell
Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole MA 02543, USA
hcaswell@whoi.edu http://www.whoi.edu/WHOI/SciTechDir/hal_caswell.html
Michael G. Neubert
Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole MA 02543, USA
mneubert@whoi.edu http://www.whoi.edu/WHOI/SciTechDir/michael_g_neubert.html
Demographic analyses begin with a description of how individual organisms “move”, via development, through their life cycle. In their simplest form, they merely count living individuals, but there has been a consistent movement toward incorporating differences among individuals based on age, size, sex, or developmental stage. Dispersal studies focus on how individuals “move”, via passive or active transport, through space. The simplest studies assume a particularly simple form of movement (diffusion) and do not distinguish among different kinds of individuals.
Recent developments have shown how to combine demography and dispersal into a single model incorporating both kinds of “movement” of individuals. These models permit both development and dispersal to be stage-dependent, and relax the restriction to diffusion as a description of movement.
We propose to invite speakers who will address both theoretical and empirical aspects of this problem. This is a particularly exciting possibility because we have been leading a working group at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis that has compiled a comparative analysis of well over 100 data sets including both demographic and dispersal data. (Although we will not limit invitees to this group.)
Topics that may be presented include:
computation of invasion wave speed from stage-specific demographic and dispersal data
sensitivity and elasticity analysis of wave speed
LTRE analysis of the response of invasion wave speed to variation in dispersal and demography
effects of seasonality, environmental stochasticity, two-sex interactions, and animal-mediated dispersal on invasion speed
invasion speed and population growth rate as complementary descriptions of population performance, with implications for conservation biology, pest control, and population restoration
combining demography and dispersal to study the effects of habitat destruction