IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v222y2011i17p3061-3070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The consequences of being colonial: Allee effects in metapopulations of seabirds

Author

Listed:
  • Schippers, Peter
  • Stienen, Eric W.M.
  • Schotman, Alex G.M.
  • Snep, Robbert P.H.
  • Slim, Pieter A.

Abstract

Most seabirds live in large colonies. This fact signifies that there is an advantage in living and breeding together. Four explanations are put fore ward for this colonial behaviour, more birds have: (1) a reduced per capita predation of chicks in colonies, (2) a better anti-predator defence, (3) a more efficient foraging in temporally patchy environments and (4) sex ratios that are more likely to be close to one. These factors induce a strong Allee-type density-dependent relation, a positive relation between density and population growth rate at low density. Nevertheless, these Allee effects are generally ignored in seabird population studies. Therefore we study the consequences of introducing Allee-type density-dependent relations in a spatially explicit metapopulation model for the Common Tern (Sterna hirundo). Simulations show that Allee effects might be responsible for a 20-fold decline in the recolonization distances, causing patches and parts of metapopulations to effectively become more isolated. This leads to long recolonization times of empty breeding patches which consequently cause slower metapopulation expansion and recovery. Additionally, we show that the typical early warning signals, that show that a population is near its critical threshold induce by Allee effects, is less pronounced in colonies that are part of a metapopulation. Hence, we offer some simple equations to estimate critical densities and thresholds in a colony.

Suggested Citation

  • Schippers, Peter & Stienen, Eric W.M. & Schotman, Alex G.M. & Snep, Robbert P.H. & Slim, Pieter A., 2011. "The consequences of being colonial: Allee effects in metapopulations of seabirds," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(17), pages 3061-3070.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:222:y:2011:i:17:p:3061-3070
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.05.022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380011003024
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.05.022?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schmickl, Thomas & Karsai, Istvan, 2010. "The interplay of sex ratio, male success and density-independent mortality affects population dynamics," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(8), pages 1089-1097.
    2. Russell, James C. & Lecomte, Vincent & Dumont, Yves & Le Corre, Matthieu, 2009. "Intraguild predation and mesopredator release effect on long-lived prey," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(8), pages 1098-1104.
    3. Marten Scheffer & Jordi Bascompte & William A. Brock & Victor Brovkin & Stephen R. Carpenter & Vasilis Dakos & Hermann Held & Egbert H. van Nes & Max Rietkerk & George Sugihara, 2009. "Early-warning signals for critical transitions," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7260), pages 53-59, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. García-Quismondo, Manuel & Nisbet, Ian C.T. & Mostello, Carolyn & Reed, J. Michael, 2018. "Modeling population dynamics of roseate terns (Sterna dougallii) in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 368(C), pages 298-311.
    2. Arigoni, Ashley & Newman, Alexandra & Turner, Cameron & Kaptur, Casey, 2017. "Optimizing global thermal coal shipments," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 118-127.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James J Elser & Timothy J Elser & Stephen R Carpenter & William A Brock, 2014. "Regime Shift in Fertilizer Commodities Indicates More Turbulence Ahead for Food Security," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-7, May.
    2. Darrell Jiajie Tay & Chung-I Chou & Sai-Ping Li & Shang You Tee & Siew Ann Cheong, 2016. "Bubbles Are Departures from Equilibrium Housing Markets: Evidence from Singapore and Taiwan," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, November.
    3. Dur, Gaël & Won, Eun-Ji & Han, Jeonghoon & Lee, Jae-Seong & Souissi, Sami, 2021. "An individual-based model for evaluating post-exposure effects of UV-B radiation on zooplankton reproduction," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 441(C).
    4. Martin Lindegren & Vasilis Dakos & Joachim P Gröger & Anna Gårdmark & Georgs Kornilovs & Saskia A Otto & Christian Möllmann, 2012. "Early Detection of Ecosystem Regime Shifts: A Multiple Method Evaluation for Management Application," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-9, July.
    5. Simon DeDeo, 2016. "Conflict and Computation on Wikipedia: A Finite-State Machine Analysis of Editor Interactions," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-23, July.
    6. Quentin Remy & Julius Hohlfeld & Maxime Vergès & Yann Le Guen & Jon Gorchon & Grégory Malinowski & Stéphane Mangin & Michel Hehn, 2023. "Accelerating ultrafast magnetization reversal by non-local spin transfer," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    7. Corsi, Fulvio & Lillo, Fabrizio & Pirino, Davide & Trapin, Luca, 2018. "Measuring the propagation of financial distress with Granger-causality tail risk networks," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 18-36.
    8. Florian Wagener, 2013. "Shallow lake economics run deep: nonlinear aspects of an economic-ecological interest conflict," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 423-450, December.
    9. Palola, Pirta & Bailey, Richard & Wedding, Lisa, 2022. "A novel framework to operationalise value-pluralism in environmental valuation: Environmental value functions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    10. Maeno, Yoshiharu, 2011. "Discovery of a missing disease spreader," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(20), pages 3412-3426.
    11. Tousheng Huang & Huayong Zhang & Zhao Liu & Ge Pan & Xiumin Zhang & Zichun Gao, 2019. "Theoretical Study on Self-Organization of Vegetation Patterns Triggered by Water Resource in Deposited Sediment Layer," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-11, July.
    12. Faranda, Davide & Lucarini, Valerio & Manneville, Paul & Wouters, Jeroen, 2014. "On using extreme values to detect global stability thresholds in multi-stable systems: The case of transitional plane Couette flow," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 26-35.
    13. Kevin Thellmann & Marc Cotter & Sabine Baumgartner & Anna Treydte & Georg Cadisch & Folkard Asch, 2018. "Tipping Points in the Supply of Ecosystem Services of a Mountainous Watershed in Southeast Asia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-15, July.
    14. Katherine A Spielmann & Matthew A Peeples & Donna M Glowacki & Andrew Dugmore, 2016. "Early Warning Signals of Social Transformation: A Case Study from the US Southwest," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-18, October.
    15. Ren, Bijie & Polasky, Stephen, 2014. "The optimal management of renewable resources under the risk of potential regime shift," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 195-212.
    16. John P DeLong & Oskar Burger, 2015. "Socio-Economic Instability and the Scaling of Energy Use with Population Size," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-12, June.
    17. Kathrin Viol & Helmut Schöller & Andreas Kaiser & Clemens Fartacek & Wolfgang Aichhorn & Günter Schiepek, 2022. "Detecting pattern transitions in psychological time series – A validation study on the Pattern Transition Detection Algorithm (PTDA)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-22, March.
    18. Dmitry Gromov & Thorsten Upmann, 2021. "Dynamics and Economics of Shallow Lakes: A Survey," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-16, December.
    19. Marian Gidea, 2017. "Topology data analysis of critical transitions in financial networks," Papers 1701.06081, arXiv.org.
    20. Martinez-Garcia, Ricardo & Cabal, Ciro & Calabrese, Justin M. & Hernández-García, Emilio & Tarnita, Corina E. & López, Cristóbal & Bonachela, Juan A., 2023. "Integrating theory and experiments to link local mechanisms and ecosystem-level consequences of vegetation patterns in drylands," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:222:y:2011:i:17:p:3061-3070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.