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Spatial Population Dynamics of a Marine Organism with a Complex Life Cycle
Author(s) -
Possingham Hugh P.,
Roughgarden Jonathan
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.2307/1937366
Subject(s) - shore , population , ecology , barnacle , mesoscale meteorology , pelagic zone , habitat , advection , biology , biological dispersal , oceanography , environmental science , larva , fishery , geology , physics , demography , sociology , thermodynamics
This paper presents a modeling framework within which mesoscale features in ocean currents can be integrated with coastal habitat structure to predict the distribution and abundance of a marine organism with a coastal adult phase and a pelagic larval phase. The processes in the model that influence larvae away from shore are advection, diffusion, and mortality; the processes influencing larvae adjacent to the coast are settlement and reproduction by adults. The adults on the coast are influenced by recruitment, mortality, and the availability of suitable habitat. Larvae are passive particles in the ocean whose movement is modeled with a transport equation. The water column is represented by a two—dimensional plane and the coast by a straight line. Age—integrated biological parameters for the barnacle Balanus glandula are used in numerical examples. A one—dimensional model illustrates the interaction of eddy—diffusion and larval mortality in determining larval wastage that, in turn, affects whether a species can persist. In a two—dimensional model (solved using finite difference techniques) the persistence of a population also depends on the length of suitable habitat, the strength and structure of the along—shore flow field, and biological parameters of the species concerned. Initial conditions may have a large influence on the growth and spread of the population, especially in the presence of along—shore flow.