The Spread of a Reinvading Species: Range Expansion in the California Sea Otter

Autor: Simon A. Levin, J. A. Lubina
Rok vydání: 1988
Předmět:
Zdroj: The American Naturalist. 131:526-543
ISSN: 1537-5323
0003-0147
Popis: The spread of the California sea otter population provides excellent material for studying the spread of an invading species because the data are not confounded by spread in multiple spatial dimensions. We analyze data on the range expansion of the California sea otter within the context of a classical mathematical model incorporating growth, diffusion, and advection. Classical theory predicts that population fronts will form, that asymptotic rates of advance will be constant within homogeneous habitat, and that these asymptotic rates are given by twice the square root of the product of two factors, the intrinsic rate of increase and the diffusion coefficient. These patterns were observed in the historical data for range expansion of the otter, and the central remaining problem is explaining the observed differences in the rate of spread between the northern and southern fronts. Our analysis suggests that advection plays, at most, a minor role in those differences and, moreover, that estimated differences...
Databáze: OpenAIRE