Regional distribution and abundance of plant species: disentangling habitat effects and metapopulation dynamics in spatial patterns

The spatial distribution of species may result both from the availability of suitable habitats and from the species’ intrinsic spatial dynamics. Given such context, our issue was basically to try to infer underlying processes from such spatial distributions. This approach is known as a theoretical and technical challenge.

We firstly investigated a metapopulation model, which described the colonization-extinction dynamics of populations, in a static and spatially structured habitat. We highlighted important emergent properties of the model. Thanks to this knowledge, we proposed a robust way to infer habitat and spatial dynamics from a given species’ distribution.

We finally were able to study the spatial dynamics of plant species in the Drôme French district, using a recent floristic occupancy survey. We then provided a measure of the sensitivity of species’ dynamics to human land uses regimes. We also showed that there is a link between the reproductive strategies at the level of individuals, and the global features of species’ spatial dynamics. Hence our method appeared to be relevant for testing cross-scale ecological hypotheses.

Speaker

Francois MUNOZ, Engineer from CENTRALE, ENGREF

Organisers

Department of Ecology, French Institute of Pondicherry

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, St. Louis Street, Pondicherry-605 001

Time

16h15 to 17h15

Contact: F.Munoz