Habitat heterogeneity and dispersal network structure as drivers of metacommunity dynamics
Davide Bernardi, Alice Doimo, Giorgio Nicoletti, Prajwal Padmanabha, Andrea Rinaldo, Samir Suweis, Sandro Azaele, Amos Maritan
TL;DR
The paper develops a bottom-up framework that derives metacommunity dynamics on arbitrary dispersal networks from detailed individual-based processes, producing an effective dispersal kernel $\hat{K}$ that couples local demography to landscape topology. By exploiting a fast-exploration regime, it reduces to tractable one- or few-dimensional descriptions, yielding exact persistence criteria via the leading Perron–Frobenius eigenvalue $\lambda_{\max}$ and a generalized metapopulation capacity. The authors further incorporate stochasticity to reveal universal finite-size scaling of extinction times and extend the theory to multispecies communities, showing how habitat heterogeneity and network structure enable niche formation and stable coexistence above a critical heterogeneity. The framework also accommodates extensions to diverse ecological processes, providing a versatile and interpretable route to spatially explicit ecological theory with analytical benchmarks and potential data-guided applications.
Abstract
Spatial structure and species interactions jointly shape the dynamics and biodiversity of ecological systems, yet most theoretical models either neglect spatial heterogeneity or sacrifice analytical tractability. Here, we provide a unified microscopic, mechanistic framework for deriving effective metapopulation and metacommunity models from individual-based ecological dynamics on arbitrary dispersal networks. The resulting coarse-grained description features an effective dispersal kernel that encodes both microscopic dynamical parameters and network topology. Based on this framework, we demonstrate exact analytical results for species persistence in both homogeneous and heterogeneous landscapes, including a generalization of the classical concept of metapopulation capacity to non-uniform local extinction rates. Incorporating stochasticity arising from finite carrying capacities, we obtain a reduced one-dimensional description that reveals universal finite-size scaling laws for extinction times and fluctuations. Extending the approach to multiple competing species, we prove that in homogeneous environments monodominance can be avoided only in a fine-tuned, marginally stable coexistence state, and that the classic metapopulation capacity gives only a necessary but not sufficient condition for persistence. We demonstrate that heterogeneous habitats can support stable coexistence, but only above a critical level of heterogeneity. Finally, we outline how additional ecological processes can be systematically incorporated within the same formalism. Together, these results provide analytical benchmarks and a general route for constructing spatially explicit ecological theories based on an interpretable underlying mechanistic foundation.