Human-mediated dispersal and disturbance shape the metapopulation dynamics of a long-lived herb.

As anthropogenic impacts on the natural world escalate, there is increasing interest in the role of humans in dispersing seeds. But the consequences of this Human-Mediated Dispersal (HMD) on plant spatial dynamics are little studied. In this paper, we ask how secondary dispersal by HMD affects the dynamics of a natural plant metapopulation.

Human-mediated dispersal of seeds over long distances.

Human activities have fundamental impacts on the distribution of species through altered land use, but also directly by dispersal of propagules. Rare long-distance dispersal events have a disproportionate importance for the spread of species including invasions. While it is widely accepted that humans may act as vectors of long-distance dispersal, there are few studies that quantify this process.

Short-term transformation of matrix into hospitable habitat facilitates gene flow and mitigates fragmentation.

Habitat fragmentation has major implications for demography and genetic structure of natural plant and animal populations as small and isolated populations are more prone to extinction. Therefore, many recent studies focus on spatial fragmentation. However, the temporal configuration of suitable habitat may also influence dispersal and gene flow in fragmented landscapes.

Extinction risk, coloured noise and the scaling of variance.

The impact of temporally correlated fluctuating environments (coloured noise) on the extinction risk of populations has become a main focus in theoretical population ecology. In this study we particularly focus on the extinction risk in strongly correlated environments. Here, we found that, in contrast to moderate auto-correlation, the extinction risk was highly dependent on the process of noise generation, in particular on the method of variance scaling.